Description
Book SynopsisHonorable Mention,ALAA-Arvey Foundation Book Award,Association of Latin American Art Finalist,2024 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award,College Art AssociationHow Mexican artists and intellectuals created a new identity for modern Mexico City through its ties to Aztec Tenochtitlan. After archaeologists rediscovered a corner of the Templo Mayor in 1914, artists, intellectuals, and government officials attempted to revive Tenochtitlan as an instrument for reassessing Mexican national identity in the wake of the Revolution of 1910. What followed was a conceptual excavation of the original Mexica capital in relation to the transforming urban landscape of modern Mexico City. Revolutionary-era scholars took a renewed interest in sixteenth century maps as they recognized an intersection between Tenochtitlan and the foundation of a Spanish colonial settlement directly over it. Meanwhile, Mexico City developed with modern roads and expanded civic areas as agents of nationalism promoted concepts like indigenismo, the embrace of Indigenous cultural expressions. The promotion of artworks and new architectural projects such as Diego Rivera's Anahuacalli Museum helped to make real the notion of a modern Tenochtitlan. Employing archival materials, newspaper reports, and art criticism from 1914 to 1964, Resurrecting Tenochtitlan connects art history with urban studies to reveal the construction of a complex physical and cultural layout for Mexico's modern capital.
Trade ReviewLike all important urban centers, Mexico City is composed of layers of history, culture, architecture, and urban and demographic changes, and its historical foundation still plays an important role in Mexico’s political and social life. This book aims to show how these layers and foundational myths affect modern understandings of the city...Deftly weaving together archival documents and maps, graphic ideations of the city’s past and present, and historical accounts, [
Resurrecting Tenochtitlan] presents [Mexico City's] complexity as a space of contestation in which different actors vie to articulate their ideological positions within the rapidly changing environment of this historically grounded city. * CHOICE *
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1. Imagining Tenochtitlan
- 2. Archaeologists Set the Stage
- 3. The Civic Art of Early Maps
- 4. Picturing the Capital, Integrating the Nation
- 5. The Perfect Tenochtitlan
- 6. Mexico City: Yesterday, Today, and Always
- 7. Tenochtitlan Restaged
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
