Garden Paradise: The Magnificent Safavid Carpet from the Burrell Collection, Glasgow explores the importance of the garden to Islamic culture through the lens of the world-renowned Wagner Garden Carpet. This rarely displayed masterpiece, woven in southeastern Iran in the 17th century, is one of the three earliest surviving Persian garden carpets in the world.

Exhibited in America for the first time, the Wagner Garden Carpet is on loan from the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, Scotland. The presentation comes to Houston following its debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Garden Paradise also features a selection of objects from the collection of Kuwait-based Hossein Afshar, who has made a long-term loan commitment to the MFAH. Together these important works of art demonstrate the profound appeal of garden imagery across all artistic media, from ceramics and metalwork to the arts of the book in Islamic lands. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore a central topic of Islamic art and culture within the context of a one-of-a-kind masterwork.