Search for the Unicorn at the Cloisters, New York
To mark the 75th anniversary of the Cloisters in New York – a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of medieval Europe – and 75 years of the Unicorn Tapestries being a focal point of that collection (a gift to the museum by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1938 when the museum was opened), the Cloisters is currently holding an exhibition ‘Search for the Unicorn, An Exhibition in Honor of The Cloisters’ 75th Anniversary’. The exhibition contains over forty works of art from different cultures drawn from the collections of the Met, sister institutions, and private collections and invites audiences to see the seven Unicorn Tapestries dated to the 15th century from fresh perspective with examples of art coming from a 4th century copy of the 10th century Persian text of the Shahnama (The Book of Kings) and an illustration dating to 1701, from ‘The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existence’ by Zakaria bin Muhammad bin Mahmud Abu Yahya Qazwini of India.
The Unicorn in Captivity, South Netherlandish, ca. 1495-1505
‘Iskandar Kills the Monster of Habash’, From a Book of Kings (Shahnama), Abu’l Qasim Firdausi (935–1020). Met 69.74.5, Rogers Fund, 1969
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