In a quiet section of Paris, in the 13th Arrondissement, a large building with recessed columns, Romanesque windows, and caryatids preserves an ancient art. For four centuries the Gobelins Manufactory has made tapestries here, and today the government still pays dozens of weavers to carry on by hand. A selection of these woven artworks—some with starry names attached, such as Joan Miró, Henri Matisse, and Alexander Calder—has just landed at the Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Contemporary weavers can produce any type of image, from abstraction to photographic realism, which “Wall Power” demonstrates. All 32 of the tapestries on view were lent by the Mobilier National, an official French institution that owns antique and vintage furniture, décor, and other objects in the tens of thousands. Tapestries “have their own visual vocabulary,” says Kathleen Morris, the museum’s curator of decorative arts. “They’re just magical.” —Peter Saenger