Woven Acre

To the casual eye, most tapestries look like faded, overelaborate rugs hanging on a wall. But these 200 were different. They were the handsomest show Manhattan had seen in years. Lent by the French Government, and exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, they covered an acre of wall space. Before the exhibition closed this week, 142,545 visitors had seen it. On the last day, crowds were still waiting to get in when the gates closed.

Among the tapestries were some of the oldest in existence: 14th Century illustrations of the Apocalypse which reproduced, on a huge scale, the red and blue glow of medieval illuminations. They had originally been woven to keep out drafts in the castle at Angers.

Visitors stumbled from the wild visions of the Apocalypse into a wonderland of lions, unicorns and delicate ladies in heavy gowns. From that high point of fantasy, the art gradually declined to the 18th Century confections of pastoral sex and sweetness designed by Boucher and Oudry. To imitate such painted designs, painstaking weavers had used as many as 30,000 different shades of thread.

The happiest surprise of the show had come toward the end: the last quarter-acre proved that France was now enjoying a tapestry renaissance, sparked by Painter Jean Lurc,at (TIME, June 24, 1946); Fellow Artists Raoul Dufy, Marcel Gromaire and Henri Matisse designed many of the new tapestries, and the traditional weavers of Aubusson executed them.

The modern tapestries will soon be seen in Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. The other 165 will hang in Chicago's Art Institute before being returned to France by cruiser.

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