GLASGOW.- Two exhibitions opened this week featuring significant loans from the Burrell Collection. With a medieval tapestry depicting a mythical unicorn and one of the world’s rarest carpets flying over 3,000 miles to the United States, the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, is set to enchant audiences this summer in Paris and New York.

Magical Unicorns, at Musée de Cluny, Paris, 14 July 2018 – 25 February 2019, is the inaugural exhibition at the renowned museum. Exploring late medieval perceptions and depictions of unicorns, the Burrell’s Hunt of the Unicorn, a tapestry originally from Switzerland dating from before 1592, is on display. The tapestry, purchased by Sir William on 6 February 1937 for £250 has not been shown in public since 1969.

The tapestry depicts a white unicorn driven by the Angel Gabriel blowing a hunting horn and holding a leashed dog leaping onto the lap of a seated virgin. In the 1500’s, many believed unicorns were real with depictions of unicorns prevalent throughout history.

The display of a late 17th-century Persian carpet, never before seen in the United States, also opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this week. Featuring the Wagner Garden Carpet, the display titled Eternal Springtime: A Persian Garden Carpet from the Burrell Collection is open from 10 July – 7 October 2018.

The Wagner Garden Carpet is considered to be one of only three early surviving Persian garden carpets in the world. However the design of this particular carpet is unique and no other examples resembling it or using part of its base-pattern have yet been identified. Measuring 5309 mm in height and 4318 mm in width, due to its size and previous restrictions on lending beyond the shores of Great Britain, the display will provide a rare opportunity for members of the public to see the earliest example of a garden carpet outside of Asia.

Eternal Springtime: A Persian Garden Carpet from the Burrell Collection at The Metropolitan Museum, New York and Magical Unicorns at Musée de Cluny, Paris, take place whilst the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, undergoes an estimated £66 million refurbishment of its building and redisplay of its extensive Collection. When the Burrell Collection re-opens late 2020, the Wagner Garden Carpet will be focal object of a three-carpet display that explores heavenly gardens in Islamic art as depicted on Persian carpets.

Both loans follow on the heels of the exhibition Courbet, Degas, Cézanne… Chefs-d'oeuvre réalistes et impressionistes de la collection Burrell, the inaugural exhibition at the newly reopened Musée Cantini, Marseilles which features 58 works from the Burrell and which continues until 23 September 2018.

This year will also see the Burrell travel for the first time, to the Far East as 73 works from the Burrell Collection and seven supporting works from Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery will tour five museums across Japan from October 2018 to January 2020.