Man Ray: When Objects Dream—Surrealism Reimagined at The Met

New York, November 2025—The Metropolitan Museum of Art once again redefines how we understand the avant-garde with its monumental exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream, opening this November 1st, 2025 in New York. The exhibition offers a sweeping exploration of Man Ray’s uncanny vision—a world where photography and sculpture, dreams and material reality, merge in ways that still unsettle and astonish a century later.

Visitor Information

Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Dates: November 1, 2025 – March 8, 2026

Curator: Mia Fineman, Curator, Department of Photographs

Website: metmuseum.org

Public Programs: Lectures, workshops, and film screenings throughout November–February.

Reframing the Master of Surrealism

Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, Man Ray was not just a photographer or painter; he was a radical thinker who blurred boundaries across every artistic discipline. The Met’s exhibition—organized by the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art—positions Man Ray not only as a key Surrealist but as a pioneering mind whose influence extended into fashion, film, design, and even conceptual art long before those terms became mainstream.

Source: metmuseum.org

According to The Met’s curator of photography, Mia Fineman, the exhibition “reveals how Man Ray saw objects as living entities, capable of humor, seduction, and rebellion.” The show’s subtitle, When Objects Dream, takes inspiration from the artist’s belief that objects had subconscious lives — a poetic idea that continues to inspire artists and designers today.

An Immersive Exhibition Experience

Spread across five thematic galleries, the exhibition unfolds like a dream narrative itself. The first room introduces visitors to the artist’s early experiments in Dada and Cubism after his move to Paris in 1921, where he joined the likes of Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and Kiki de Montparnasse. Rarely seen drawings, assemblages, and early “rayographs” (his term for cameraless photographs made by placing objects directly on photographic paper) form the backbone of this opening section.

The centerpiece of this first gallery is the haunting Le Violon d’Ingres (1924), on loan from the Centre Pompidou, a work that fuses sensuality and wit in equal measure. Man Ray transformed the body of his muse, Kiki, into a musical instrument, commenting on both desire and objectification through visual metaphor. This iconic image, reproduced endlessly in textbooks and advertisements, is here displayed alongside preparatory sketches and vintage prints, offering insight into its layered meaning.

As visitors move through the galleries, the exhibition deepens into Man Ray’s surreal universe. One room, bathed in soft blue light, is dedicated entirely to Objects of Affection—assemblages, cameras, and surreal instruments that challenge the idea of utility. Here, Gift (1921), a flatiron studded with nails, sits beside Indestructible Object (1923), a metronome with a photograph of an eye attached to its pendulum. The Met has created a sound installation of ticking metronomes that fills the room, echoing the artist’s fascination with rhythm and mechanical motion.

The Spirit of Collaboration

Man Ray’s art thrived in collaboration — from the Montparnasse studio sessions with Lee Miller to his film experiments with Duchamp and surrealist poetry circles. The exhibition brings this network to life through archival footage, vintage magazines, and letters from the Man Ray Archives at the Centre Pompidou and The Getty. Visitors can browse digital reproductions of La Révolution surréaliste and Minotaure, key publications that shaped the avant-garde dialogue between 1920 and 1939.

One highlight is a section devoted to fashion photography. Long before Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar popularized surrealist aesthetics, Man Ray was experimenting with form and shadow to create timeless imagery. His photographs of Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Nancy Cunard are displayed beside couture pieces inspired by his imagery, lent by The Met’s Costume Institute.

Fashion historian Jessica Regan notes, “Man Ray turned photography into performance—his models became muses, his lighting became language. This exhibition is not nostalgia; it’s a rediscovery.”

Film, Fantasy, and the Moving Image

In a darkened screening room, The Met presents a rare rotation of Man Ray’s experimental films, including L’Étoile de mer (1928) and Emak-Bakia (1926). These films, featuring slow dissolves, abstract imagery, and poetic rhythm, demonstrate the artist’s mastery of dream logic long before Surrealism reached Hollywood. The museum collaborated with the Cinémathèque Française to restore several reels, ensuring the works are presented in their original 16mm projection format.

The accompanying soundtrack, composed by American minimalist Philip Glass specifically for the exhibition, adds a modern resonance—echoing Man Ray’s timeless influence across artistic generations.

Man Ray and America: A Transatlantic Dialogue

While the show centers on Man Ray’s Paris years, The Met situates him within a broader American narrative. Born and educated in New York, he was initially part of the American modernist circle around Alfred Stieglitz and Francis Picabia. Yet, as the exhibition reveals, it was in Paris that Man Ray found freedom from conventional American realism. His expatriate identity is highlighted in a gallery featuring correspondence between Man Ray and Gertrude Stein, as well as portraits of fellow expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway and Josephine Baker.

Curator Mia Fineman describes the show as “a homecoming of sorts—an acknowledgment that the avant-garde was not purely European, but transatlantic. Man Ray’s imagination was shaped as much by Brooklyn as by Montparnasse.”

Educational Programming and Digital Access

The Met complements When Objects Dream with a robust lineup of programming. Lectures by leading art historians, film screenings, and hands-on workshops in “photographic surrealism” offer visitors a chance to engage creatively. The museum has also launched an interactive microsite allowing users to create their own “rayographs” virtually—an inventive blend of education and technology that would have delighted Man Ray himself.

An upcoming symposium, Surrealism and the Machine Age, will bring together scholars from The Met, MoMA, and the Musée d’Orsay to discuss the artist’s legacy in the context of AI and digital art. In this way, The Met underscores the continuing relevance of Surrealism’s inquiry into dreams, desire, and the unconscious in our algorithmic age.

A Vision That Still Dreams

The closing section, Dreams Without End, invites visitors to reflect on the continuity of Man Ray’s legacy. Contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Shirin Neshat acknowledge his influence in video interviews projected across the gallery’s final walls. A final installation, featuring hundreds of suspended objects illuminated in shifting light, symbolizes the endless interplay between the seen and the imagined.

Standing in that room, surrounded by the echoes of ticking metronomes and dreamlike light, one senses that Man Ray’s world—where objects breathe and imagination reigns—remains profoundly alive.

Header Source: metmuseum.org