A recent spate of exhibitions and an upcoming retrospective have drawn increased attention to the Italian Arte Povera pioneer Alighiero Boetti or in his identitysuturing guise Alighiero e and Boetti 19401994. Perhaps Boettis bestknown works are the textile maps of the world that he commissioned from female weavers in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning in 1971. In these maps every country appears in the color and design of its national flag and the borders are inscribed with texts of Boettis d