News
The team and the Board of Fondation Toms Pauli wish you an excellent 2026 and invite you to discover the works from its two collections, presented in three exhibitions.
Metamorphoses, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Fondation Toms Pauli is loaning three ancient tapestries for the Rijksmuseum’s Metamorphoses exhibition. Among them, two remarkable tapestries stand out for their exceptional state of preservation as well as for their artistic and historical significance. They are part of the Story of Apollo series, also called the Barberini Metamorphoses, and depict Latona Transforming the Lycian Peasants into Frogs and Apollo and Daphne. Both tapestries were woven in the workshops established in Rome by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VII and a great patron of tapestry.
This ensemble also features a rare tapestry, The Rape of Europa, from the Metamorphoses of La Hyre series, woven in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel workshops, around 1650-1670. Prior to the creation of the Royal Gobelins Manufactory, this was one of the three major private Parisian workshops which at the time brought together the finest craftsmen. The tapestry thus bears witness to an important yet relatively little-known period in the development of tapestry history.
Associated with elites as a marker of social status, these tapestries also reflect their interest in the texts of Ovid.
Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms mudac Musée Cantonal de Design et d'Arts Appliqués Contemporains, Lausanne
Curated by Fondation Toms Pauli and mudac
On the occasion of their respective twenty-fifth anniversaries, Fondation Toms Pauli and mudac explore tapestry as a vector of storytelling and propaganda by presenting a selection of exceptional works, remarkable both for their expressive power and their monumental scale. Through a dialogue between baroque wall hangings from the Mary Toms Collection and contemporary tapestries by Goshka Macuga and Grayson Perry, Times in Tapestry presents the medium as a mirror of political and social intentions, and as a tool for critical commentary. By confronting ancient and contemporary works, Times in Tapestry highlights the timeless power of tapestry: through its rich visual language it has the capacity to convey complex messages and spark reflection on universal issues.
A publication, with contributions by eight authors who address tapestry as a narrative medium from different perspectives, accompanies the exhibition. It is presented in a boxed set together with 23 loose-leaf plates of the monumental works displayed at Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms.
Times in Tapestry: Goshka Macuga x Grayson Perry x Mary Toms
Magdalena Abakanowicz, the Thread of Existence Musée Bourdelle, Paris
Following presentations in London, Lausanne, Oslo, Warsaw, and more recently in Tilburg and ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Musée Bourdelle in Paris will host a major exhibition devoted to Magdalena Abakanowicz. Through the loan of eight significant works—reliefs and spatial forms—Fondation Toms Pauli contributes to the curatorial ambition of emphasising the sculptural dimension of the Polish artist’s oeuvre. The Paris exhibition is staged in the home-workshop of Antoine Bourdelle, sculptor and drawing teacher at the Gobelins manufactory, whose pupil Maria Łaszkiewicz enabled Abakanowicz to realise her first large-format tapestries for the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication in French.