01-01-2011 
The MATAM - Museum of Antique Textile Arts in Milan
Scheduled to open to the public in 2011, the MATAM (Museum of Antique Textile Art in Milan) will be the first museum in Italy and in Europe to be dedicated to textile arts only, especially historic carpets, and to foster scholarly research in this specific field. The museum will be housed in a newly renovated building in Brera, the artist’s quarter in the heart of Milan, and will further enrich the city’s cultural life.

As if any reminder were needed, Milan not only is an international pole for fashion, design and art, it is also considered as the capital of antique carpet collecting. For the chief town of Lombardy, the MATAM is a unique opportunity to play a major role on the Italian and International scenes through the promotion of cultural activities in a field that is closely related to other sectors in which important results and primates have already been achieved. Supporting the MATAM project will also mean contributing to the preservation of textile art heritage through the conservation and display of precious textile artefacts in a historical and cultural landscape that is the ideal humus for collecting and scholarly research.

03-10-2010 
Arthur Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art
The Art Institute of Chicago, July 17 – October 3, 2010



To celebrate the opening of the newly refurbished permanent installation of Islamic art, the Art Institute of Chicago has organized the exhibition Arthur Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art, which shows masterpieces comprising the permanent collection of the museum, developed under the guidance of Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969). A great art historian, curator and collector, Pope also published “A survey of Persian Art” between 1938 and 1939. This work is composed of several volumes and still today considered to be one of the most complete works on Persian Art. In this publication, with the help of his wife Phyllis Ackerman, he analyzed the figurative and artistic culture of the area comprising modern Iran, west Afghanistan and central Asia, all from a western aesthetic perspective. The display includes ceramics, majolica, textiles, paintings, glassworks and lacquers, which show the development of the permanent collection of ARTIC as well as the evolution in the approach towards the study of Islamic Art.

:: Exhibition website

26-09-2010 
Los amores de Mercurio y Herse. Una tapicería rica de Willem de Pannemaker - The Loves of Mercury and Herse. A Tapestry Series by Willem de Pannemaker
Museo Nacional del Prado, June 1 – September 26, 2010

Prado museum in Madrid has organized an exceptional exhibition where one can admire tapestries from ‘The Wedding of Mercury’ series. Eight pieces woven by Willem de Pannamaker (who lived in the Flanders between 1535 and 1581) constitute the series, which later entered the collection of Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, the first Duke of Lerma.

This Spanish noble was a great admirer and collector of Flemish and Italian art. Indeed, the Pannemaker series unites these two cultures and is probably why it was particularly appreciated by the Duke. The series, inspired by Metamorphoses by Ovid, narrates a story of love and jealousy, the main protagonists of which were Mercury, Herse and Aglauros. The borders of the tapestries are particularly worth mentioning and remain quite faithful to those designed by Rafael for the tapestries of The Acts of the Apostles at the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

This exhibition provides the unique opportunity to admire the original and complete series, the components of which are currently part of different Spanish and international collections.

:: Exhibition website

04-09-2010 
Legendary Istanbul - From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 Years of A Capital
Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul

5 June – 4 September 2010

To celebrate the 2010 European Capital of Culture, Sabanci Museum in Istanbul is hosting an impressive event which traces 8000 years of the history of the Turkish capital. There are more than 500 objects on display including numerous recent findings at the excavation site in Yenekapi, as well as other artefacts coming from foreign museums (for example, the Vatican in Italy and England). The extraordinary variety of artefacts (archaelogical findings, paintings, manuscripts, liturgical objects, jewellery and textiles) shows the hegemonic role which Byzantion/Constantinople/Istanbul has always played in the Mediterranean and underlines its cosmopolitan nature and its role as a “bridge” between the diverse cultures typically found in the city. As the curator Nazan Ölçere recalls, the identity and the wealth of Istanbul resides exactly in this unique mixture of diverse cultures which has allowed for the creation of the extraordinary objects on display.

:: Exhibition website