New York’s Metropolitan to open massive exhibition on Surrealism

Surrealist art from five continents is being celebrated by New York’s Metropolitan Museum with a major exhibition that shifts the focus away from the familiar European masters of the movement.

Rather than teasing big-name Western artists like Dali and Magritte, the show takes a big-picture approach including surrealist works from Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, North Africa, Australia and Latin America.

The movement, which “asserted the unconscious and dreams over the familiar and every day” according to the museum, emerged in Paris in the 1920s and has often been represented with European masterpieces. However this exhibition shows the exciting Surrealist movements happening elsewhere.

“Surrealism is inherently dynamic and has travelled and evolved from place to place and time to time,” exhibition curator Stephanie D’Alessandro said.

“Its scope is (and always has been) international and, more specifically, transnational—extending across national borders to unite ideas and people, while also remaining specific and local in its liberatory drive.”

The sprawling exhibition is spread across eight galleries, with one entire gallery dedicated to the topic of “The Work of Dreams.”

The exhibition features works from 45 countries and some 8 decades and is intended to “recast appreciation of this most revolutionary and globe-spanning movement,” the curators say.

The “Surrealism Beyond Borders” show is scheduled to open on October 11 and run until the end of January 2022.