A Double-Edged Weapon: The Sword as Icon and Artifact
Organized by The Higgins Armory Museum

From the European knight to the Japanese samurai, from the Book of Genesis to Star Wars, the sword has held a unique fascination for people around the world. The Higgins Armory Museum’s traveling exhibition A Double-Edged Weapon: The Sword as Icon and Artifact offers the public a chance to see both representative and unusual swords from the Higgins collection, emphasizing at once the diverse forms and meanings of the artifact and its surprising universality across time and in different cultures. The exhibition addresses the interests of a general audience to which the sword is a perennial and familiar icon, while offering substantive learning opportunities even for the specialist. The exhibition consists of some seventy artifacts, ranging from the medieval warrior to the modern Freemason, and from the time of the Trojan War to the twentieth century, including examples from such places as Montenegro, Kenya, and India.

Contents: One hundred swords and selections of sword elements; pommels, hilts, decorative handguards, and scabbard fittings
Space Req: 1,500-2,000 square feet

Current Tour Schedule 

November 13, 2008- April 26, 2009
Historic Arkansas Museum
Little Rock, Arkansas

May 17 - October 25, 2009
Museum of Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas

November 15, 2009 - January 24, 2010
Littleton Historical Museum
Littleton, Colorado