Learn how explorers, archaeologists, and artists have used Mexico's Pre-Columbian past as a vehicle for their journeys in the exhibition Obsidian Mirror-Travels. Included in the exhibition, both on-site or online, are ancient Mexican books, or codices, which chronicle ancient Aztec history. The Codex Boturini tells the history of the Mexica (Aztec) migrations from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico.
Use the lesson "Telling Stories" to explore ancient books with your students. Students can identify narrative elements in a story, and learn how artists use symbolic imagery to communicate the larger narrative. Encourage your students to create a codex that tells the story of their familys migration to their current city.
Lesson Plan: Telling Stories
Exhibition: Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology is on view at the Getty Research Institute through March 27, 2011.
View a digitized version of the Codex Boturini, and other manuscripts and albums from Mexico.
To see the Codex Boturini, from the link above, click on "Getty Research Institute digitized version" under the title of the codex. From there, click on the small graphic of at the left side of the page.
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Facsimile of the Codex Boturini (detail), Louis Samyn (French, active early 1800s) after Agostino Aglio (Italian, 1777–1857), Cincinnati, 1839. Lithograph after original manuscript in John Delafield Jr., An Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America (New York, 1839). The Getty Research Institute, 93–B6748
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