This event occurred on Nov 4, 2023.

The Getty Research Institute, in collaboration with LAist, celebrates the launch of the Digital Florentine Codex (https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/) with an outdoor concert debuting an original score by musician Lu Coy. Known for their mastery of woodwinds, electronics, and agile vocals, Coy mines inspiration from ancient texts, narratives, and musical traditions, guiding audiences through splendid architectures of ancestral memory. Musical group Xochi Cuicatl and Chris Garcia open the performance with sound and instruments of Mesoamerica.

Introducing the performances, LAist reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and Getty Research Institute researcher Kim Richter discuss the historical resonances of the Florentine Codex in Southern California, the ancestral homeland of the Gabrieleño/Tongva, Chumash, and Tataviam peoples, and as well as the Codex's impact on numerous Indigenous groups throughout the Americas.

This program is co-presented by LAist.


Lu Coy is a Los Angeles-based, queer, mixed-media artist and multi-instrumentalist of Mexican and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Coy frequently collaborates with other musicians and holds degrees in music performance and composition from the Boston Conservatory of Music and California Institute of the Arts. They have taught for institutions such as the Hammer Museum, California Institute of the Arts, and Plaza de la Raza.

Chris Garcia and Xochi Cuicatl are musicians specialized in Indigenous breath, string, and percussion instruments of Mesoamerica and Mexico, including pre- and post-invasion poetry and songs in Nahuatl, Purepecha, Spanish, and English. They have performed their original compositions nationally and internationally since 2001.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez is an award-winning correspondent on Southern California Public Radio, LAist 89.3, and host of The Forgotten Revolutionary podcast. He has reported on education, politics, arts, and higher education.

Kim Richter is senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute and leads the Florentine Codex Initiative (https://www.getty.edu/projects/floren....

The Florentine Codex is a singular manuscript created by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and a group of Nahua elders, authors, and artists. Written in parallel columns of Nahuatl and Spanish texts and hand painted with nearly 2,500 images, the encyclopedic codex is widely regarded as the most reliable source of information about Mexica culture, the Aztec Empire, and the conquest of Mexico. Upon completion in 1577 at the Imperial Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco (today Mexico City), the manuscript was sent to Europe where it entered the Medici family’s library in Florence—thus, the Florentine Codex.

View the digitized Florentine Codex: https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/

Learn more about this event: https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/event...

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