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The Met Presents First Major Exhibition on Man Ray’s Radical Reinvention of Art through the Rayograph
visura team
Oct 15, 2025
Summary
Featuring 160 rayographs, paintings, objects, prints, drawings, films, and photographs, Man Ray: When Objects Dream highlights the principal place of the rayograph—a type of cameraless photograph—within the context of many of the artist’s most important works
This exhibition features thirty-five works by Man Ray, which are part of a significant promised gift of nearly 200 works of Dada and Surrealist art from Trustee John Pritzker.
This exhibition features thirty-five works by Man Ray, which are part of a significant promised gift of nearly 200 works of Dada and Surrealist art from Trustee John Pritzker.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is pleased to present Man Ray: When Objects Dream, a major exhibition devoted to the pioneering spirit of American artist Man Ray (1890–1976).
Known for his fearless experimentation across photography, painting, sculpture, and film, Man Ray transformed modern art in the early 20th century. At the heart of the exhibition are the artist’s celebrated rayographs—camera-free images made by placing everyday objects on light-sensitive paper, then exposing and developing them to reveal mysterious, dreamlike compositions. Conceived in 1921, between the Dada and Surrealist movements, these works captured what poet Tristan Tzara once described as the instant “when objects dream.”
Bringing together more than 150 works—including approximately 60 rayographs along with paintings, prints, drawings, films, and photographs—the exhibition situates this breakthrough within Man Ray’s larger practice of the 1910s and 1920s. Drawn from The Met’s holdings and over 50 lenders worldwide, the presentation highlights how the rayograph became both a radical departure and a defining hallmark of his career.
“Before my eyes an image began to form … not a simple silhouette but something refracted, new, and strange,” Man Ray later wrote of his first rayographs. “They looked startlingly unfamiliar and mysterious.”
Exhibition Information
- Free with Museum admission
- Exhibition Dates: September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026
- Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Floor 1, Gallery 199
The exhibition is made possible by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation, with significant funding from Linda Macklowe, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation, the International Council of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Andrea Krantz and Harvey Sawikin, and Schiaparelli. The Vanguard Council provides additional support. The catalogue is published with support from the Mellon Foundation, James Park, the Carol Shuster-Polakoff Family Foundation, and Sharon Wee and Tracy Fu. Programs related to the exhibition are presented as part of The Met’s Bluff Collaborative for Research on Dada and Surrealism.
For more details, visit metmuseum.org/man-ray-when-objects-dream.

American artist Man Ray (1890–1976) was a visionary known for his radical experiments that pushed the limits of photography, painting, sculpture, and film.
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