Aztec Empire
by David Finn and Susan Joy Slack
A remarkable exhibition of Aztec (Mexica) sculpture was held recently (October 14, 2004–February 13, 2005) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Titled The Aztec Empire, the exhibition provided an overview of a culture whose extraordinary view of the universe is little known outside Latin America. Art collectors and museumgoers have long been awed by the remarkable aesthetic qualities of the many great works created by the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica in the years prior to the arrival of Hernán Cortés in the sixteenth century a.d. But the meaning of these sculptures to the people who created them is even today hidden in striking images that are at once powerful, complex, seductive, and confusing.
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