Seeing with your feet -
The Carpet in Contemporary Art
Museum Villa Rot, DE
27.02. – 22.05.2022

Faig-ahmed: collision, © San Luis Obispo Museum of Art – SLOMA

As an exhibition house for contemporary art, the Museum Villa Rot  in Burgrieden-Rot in Germany has become a beacon in the region in recent years. Progressive exhibition formats and exciting thematic exhibitions not only delight the public, but also the press, sponsors and the professional public. The museum is currently showing an exciting exhibition on the subject of carpets, which is illuminated from different perspectives.

They come in all imaginable shapes, colors and variations: high pile, Persian, fur, oriental, woven, hand-knotted or machine-made. The oldest known example of a knotted carpet is the Pasyryk carpet. It was probably made around 500 BC in Western Asia and was recovered from a grave preserved in permafrost in the Pasyryk Valley in the Altai Mountains (southern Siberia). Carpets not only exist in an immense variety, but obviously have existed for a very long time. Their history is always linked to the history of man; for example, they say something about his sedentariness, his relationship to space, or even about his hospitality.


Rolling out the red carpet

Even though the exhibition primarily wants to highlight the contemporary interpretation of this traditional medium, it also shows historical carpets. In addition to objects from the museum's own collection, we will present, for example, the red carpet that used to be rolled out for important state guests of the Federal Republic of Germany between 1958 and 1968. The ceremony was considered to be a sign of reverence symbolizing hospitality towards visitors from abroad. The object on display at Villa Rot is the centerpiece of the red carpet that was rolled out to welcome state guests at Cologne-Bonn Airport in those days. We may therefore almost certainly assume that Charles de Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II and many other famous personalities have walked across it.


Press Release:

Location:
Museum Villa Rot
Schlossweg 2
88483 Burgrieden-Rot, DE
www.villa-rot.de

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