July 9, 2025

ARTH undergrad alum Delaney Keenan (BA’20), Assistant Curator of European Art at the Worcester Art Museum, has curated a once in a generation exhibition “From the Vault: Collecting Tapestries at the Worcester Art Museum” on view in Massachusetts through July 27, 2025! 

This exhibition delves into the long history of tapestries as an art form, networks of patronage and collecting, and the fascinating stories that brought a group of tapestries to the Worcester Art Museum in central Massachusetts. “From the Vault” features objects from the permanent collection—rarely on view due to their sensitivity to light and changes in environmental conditions—including 12 large-format wall tapestries and numerous tapestry fragments spanning Antiquity to the present day. This exhibition allowed Delaney Keenan to explore two millennia of weaving techniques across different cultures and show works that are rarely on view—some for the first time in six decades. Highlights of the exhibition include the remarkably detailed 16th-century Flemish Last Judgment tapestry, long considered to be one of the most significant Renaissance tapestries in America, and Jean Lurçat’s Harvest Time (1937), which demonstrates a revival of tapestries as a medium for modern expression. This exhibition also marks the museum debut of dream disk (2024), a new acquisition by LA-based artist Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989), who is known for his intricate textile art that explores identity through the narratives he weaves. This exhibition allows one to learn more about the history of tapestry production and collecting through examples held in the Worcester Art Museum, and think broadly about the importance and endurance of tapestry weaving throughout the history of art.

This exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue that marks the first time most of these tapestries have ever been published: https://the-museum-shop-at-wam.myshopify.com/products/tapestries-catalog 

Learn more about the exhibition here: https://www.worcesterart.org/exhibitions/from-the-vault-collecting-tapestries-at-the-worcester-art-museum/ 

And see press coverage of the exhibition here in The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/fine-art/from-the-vault-collecting-tapestries-at-the-worcester-art-museum-review-woven-worlds-4089d442?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink