Category Archives: Exhibitions

Photos, reviews, and commentary on Afghan war rug exhibitions around the world.

Miami University Art Museum War Rug Exhibition

Warrug.com is proud and honored to lend more than 80 rugs from our collection to the Miami University Art Museum for an exhibition titled, Tanks, Helicopters, Guns and Grenades: The Afghan War Rugs of the 1980s-2007. The wide ranging and thorough exhibition runs through December 15, 2007.

The show was curated by Natalie Marsh, who did excellently selecting, organizing, and hanging the rugs. The Museum will host a symposium with Christopher Kremmer as keynote and featuring the very respected Afghan scholar Thomas E. Gouttierre, Homayun Sidky, Daniel Prior, and Weavings of War, Fabrics of Memory curator Ariel Zeitlin Cooke. (Previous post about The Weavings of War, and another about its opening in New York.) I will be giving a gallery talk on collecting Tuesday, September 25 at 4:00 pm.

Special thanks to everyone who worked organizing, preparing, indexing, and hanging the show, as well as everyone who supported this important exhibition at Miami University.

Event description.
Exhibition information.

Curator, Natalie Marsh, giving a tour of the exhibition to Museum members on opening night.

Super Mario Rug

This Mario Rug in the style of Super Mario Brother 3 shows Mario riding a white horse.

The horseman is the original figurative image found in carpets. Horsemen are found in the wolrd’s oldest carpet, the Pazyrik, from the 5th century BC. This ancient image, the horsemen, coupled with an icon of digital culture, Mario, is beautiful.

More images of the Mario Rug here.

The original post of this rug, years ago, including size, structure, photos, and description is here.

This rug is on loan to an exhibition at The Miami University Art Museum. The exhibition will feature approximately 70 war rugs that warrug.com is honored to have lent to the museum. More exhibition information, including dates for symposium and gallery talk by Kevin Sudeith, here

Note: This is a tribal rug, reflecting one weavers artistic vision. This rug was selected, with 25-30 others, from a collection of traditional design Afghan Baluchi rugs from Herat and Farah. All the other rugs were of traditional designs bearing no war motifs or western images.

More rugs here.