Novato teen helps de Young Museum make history with Minecraft map

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The Teotihuacan exhibition at the de Young museum is well underway, and a contribution from a 14-year-old Minecraft expert has helped the San Francisco institution make history.

Trevor Fox of Novato spent over a year building the ancient city of Teotihuacan. He created his 3D virtual map of the Mesoamerican metropolis by using Minecraft, a video game that involves building things out of textured cubes.

It's part of the de Young exhibition, "Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire."

The digital offering can be found on the museum's website.

"When I always go to an art museum, especially when I was a little kid, I was always like. This is kind of boring," said Trevor. "But I think this is a really cool way to help discover a love for art."

Trevor certainly had help. His dad, Andrew, is a web developer for the museum, but Trevor did most of the work.

"I'm kind of Minecrafted out for a bit because we did this for so long. You know looking at this map it's like, ugh. Okay," said Trevor.

Yet despite Trevor's Minecraft fatigue, he's happy that he stuck with the project and in doing so helped the de Young make history.

It's the first American museum to do something like this.

"We felt that being able to build this, being short of actually going there, which is a big tourist attraction in Mexico, but short of actually going there you can actually go visit it online and be able to see it," said Andrew.

The de Young is offering free admission this Saturday and one of the things being offered is a demonstration of Trevor's map.

Click here to view Trevor Fox's impressive map.