Culture

The Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, is hosting the exhibition The Invention of Glory: Alfonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries, which is currently showing and will be on view through May 13. The exhibition features the recently restored set of four monumental tapestries that commemorate the conquest of two strategically located cities in Morocco by the king of Portugal, Afonso V (1432-1481). In 2008 the tapestries were sent to Belgium, where they originally had been woven more than five centuries earlier by Flemish weavers in Tournai (produced under the direction of Passchier Grenier), for conservation treatment by the Royal Manufacturers De Wit in Mechelen. Since the 17th century the tapestries have been the property of the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Pastrana, Spain, just 50 miles east of Madrid. After Dallas, The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries will be on view at the San Diego Museum of Art (June 10-September 9, 2012) and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (October 5, 2012-January 6, 2013).