NEW YORK, USA – This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art invites all to enter the surreal, light bent universe of Man Ray – where objects don’t just sit still, they dream. Man Ray: When Objects Dream, opening September 14, 2025, is the first major exhibition to delve deep into the artist’s genre defying journey, anchored by his iconic rayographs.
With over 160 works on display spanning rayographs, paintings, assemblages, prints, drawings, photographs, and even experimental films – this immersive exhibition is a testament to Man Ray’s restless innovation. At its core is the rayograph. More than just cameraless photographs, rayographs were Man Ray’s radical manifesto. By placing everyday objects on light sensitive paper and exposing them to light, he conjured up shadowy, dreamlike compositions that poet Tristan Tzara once called “moments when objects dream.”
That accidental midnight moment in a Paris darkroom in 1921 sparked not only a new technique, but an entirely new philosophy of making art – one that blurred the lines between media, movement, and matter. And now, more than a century later, The Met shines a powerful light on that legacy.
Visitors can expect to see surrealist classics like Violon d’Ingres (1924), and provocative objects such as Gift (1921), a clothes iron turned into a weapon and the ticking metronome Object to be Destroyed (1923), pulsing with Man Ray’s signature mix of wit and rebellion. Also on view: rare, rarely seen paintings like Swedish Landscape (1926), revealing how the artist reentered the realm of painting using the same inventive energy that birthed the rayograph. Plus, newly restored avant-garde films that flicker with the same surreal pulse that defined a generation.
Organized by curators Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson, with research associate Micayla Bransfield, this show encapsulates Man Ray’s artistic philosophy. With support from the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation and a constellation of creative patrons, When Objects Dream makes a compelling case for Man Ray as a true architect of modern visual culture.
The show runs from September 14, 2025 to February 1, 2026 at The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 199. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, available through The Met Store.
