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, in an exhibition titled “Wall Power! Modern French Tapestry from the Mobilier National, Paris.”
As those names might suggest, the Gobelins weavers—as well as weavers in the cathedral town of Beauvais, north of Paris—are creating a new type of tapestry, one that trades historical scenes and fantastical figures for modern subjects.
