Author Description

Wall to Wall: Carpets by Artists features carpets by thirty contemporary artists working across the globe. The exhibition posits that the "artist carpet" is a powerful, but often overlooked, locus of meaning in contemporary art. It is a form that bears a long and distinguished historical pedigree, from Raphael and Peter Paul Rubens to Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Joan Mirò. Yet Wall to Wall takes as its point of departure a history of art rather than a history of medium, focusing on the ways in which these objects are advancing relevant ideas, practices, and values. Unlike exhibitions that examine artist carpets through an ethnographic lens detached from the world of art, Wall to Wall proposes that these carpets function in a continuum of modern art history as a critical form that is accelerating in use and application.