Elizabeth Boone

Professor Emerita-Art History

Newcomb Art Department
School of Liberal Arts
Stone Center Departments
The Stone Center
People Classification
Faculty
Tulane Affiliation
Core Faculty
Region
  • Europe
  • Mesoamerica
  • South America
Elizabeth Boone

Courses

Introduction to the History of Art, Pre-Columbian Art, Colonial Art of Latin America, Aztec Art , Aztec Iconography, Seminar on Mexican Manuscript Painting, Mesoamerican Divinatory Codices, Colonial Art of Latin America, Readings in Semiotics and Visual Theory, Seminar on Images and Meaning, Sixteenth-century Mexico

Additional Info

Number of Dissertations or Theses Supervised in the Past 5 Years: 5

Research

Mexico, Art History, Pre-Columbian Art, Colonial Art of Mexico, Aztecs

Degrees

  • Ph.D., University of Texas, Art History, 1977
  • M.A., University of Texas, Art History, 1974
  • B.A., College of William and Mary, Fine Arts, 1970

Academic Experience

Academic Experience
  • Professor, Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art, Tulane 1994-
  • Chair, Art Department, Tulane University, 1997-2000, 2008-2011
  • Associate Chair, Art History, Tulane University, 2002-2003, 2005-2006, 2012-2013
  • Research Associate, Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1995-

Distinctions

  • Research Hall of Fame Award, Tulane University, 2021
  • Lifetime Achievement Award, American Society for Ethnohistory, 2019
  • Named Distinguished Scholar, College Art Association, 2019
  • Recipient, H. B. Nicholson Award for Excellence in Mesoamerican Studies, Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Peabody Museum, Harvard University, October 2014
  • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2012
  • Corresponding Member, Academia Mexicana de la Historia

Languages

  • Spanish
  • French
  • Nahuatl
  • German
  • Italian

Overseas Experience

  • Mexico
  • Peru
  • Guatemala

Related Experience

  • Advisory Board for the Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Art and Archaeology, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, 1996-2000
  • Editorial Board and Area Editor, The Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, Oxford University Press, 1996-2000
  • Director, Pre-Columbian Studies and Curator, Pre-Columbian Collection, Dumbarton Oaks, 1983-1995
  • Coordinating Curator, Art of Aztec Mexico: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, National Gallery of Art, 1983-1984

Selected Publications

  • 2023. “Nahua Perspectives and Linguistic Expressions in the Colonial Pictographic Catechisms: The Examples of Counting and Making.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 2023:153-167.
  • 2023. “Reflections on the Scholarship of Cecelia Ford Klein and on Animal Symbolism in Mesoamerica.” In Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in honor of Cecelia Klein, edited by Susan Milbrath and Elizabeth Bacquedano, pp. 23-34. Boulder:
  • 2021. Descendants of Aztec Pictography: The Cultural Encyclopedias of Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • 2021 “Spatial Grammars: The Union of Art and Writing in the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico,” Hammer Lecture, UCLA, April 2021.
  • 2019. “Fashioning Conceptual Categories in the Florentine Codex: Old World and Indigenous Foundations for the Rulers and the Gods.” In The Florentine Codex: An Encyclopedia of the Nahua World in Sixteenth Century Mexico, edited by Jeanette Peterson and Ke
  • 2017. “The Pictorial History of Coixtlahuaca’s Lienzo Seler II.” In On the Mount of Intertwined Serpents: The Pictorial History of Power, Rule, and Land on Lienzo Seler II, edited by Viola Kónig. Berlin: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
  • 2017. “Who They Are and What they Wore: Aztec Costumes for European Eyes,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 67/68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 316-334.
  • 2017. Boone, Elizabeth Hill, Louise M. Burkhart, and David Eduardo Tavárez. Painted words: Nahua Catholicism, politics, and memory in the Atzaqualco pictorial catechism. Dumbarton Oaks.