NEW YORK CITY.- The exhibition "Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence," opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today and runs through June 19. On 16th-century Europe tapestries were literally the stuff of kings and Thomas Campbell, an associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spent four years assembling 41 priceless tapestries from all over Europe for the exhibition. In the Met exhibition several of the largest tapestries measure up to 30 feet in their crates. This exhibition is the first major tapestry show in the United States since the 1970's, and because of the logistical complications of packing and moving the giant masterpieces, not to mention their size, it is making only the one stop. Not only have most of these tapestries - including some of the masterpieces of their age - never crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but also there are several that for the past hundred years or so have literally not seen the light of day.