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Man Ray

MAN RAY

When Objects Dream Metropolitan Museum of Art 14 September 2025–1 February 2026 New York
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Press Release

American artist Man Ray (1890–1976) was a visionary known for his radical experiments that pushed the limits of photography, painting, sculpture, and film. In the winter of 1921, he pioneered the rayograph, a new twist on a technique used to make photographs without a camera. By placing objects on or near a sheet of light-sensitive paper, which he exposed to light and developed, Man Ray turned recognizable subjects into wonderfully mysterious compositions. Introduced in the period between Dada and Surrealism, the rayographs’ transformative, magical qualities led the poet Tristan Tzara to describe them as capturing the moments “when objects dream.”

The exhibition will be the first to situate this signature accomplishment in relation to Man Ray’s larger body of work of the 1910s and 1920s. Drawing from the collections of The Met and more than 50 U.S. and international lenders, the exhibition will feature approximately 60 rayographs and 100 paintings, objects, prints, drawings, films, and photographs—including some of the artist’s most iconic works—to highlight the central role of the rayograph in Man Ray’s boundary-breaking practice.

“Before my eyes an image began to form, not quite a simple silhouette of the objects as in a straight photograph, but distorted and refracted ... In the morning I examined the results, pinning a couple of the Rayographs—as I decided to call them—on the wall. They looked startlingly new and mysterious.” — Man Ray

The exhibition is made possible by the Barrie A. and Deedee Wigmore Foundation.

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About the Artist

A trailblazer of modern and contemporary art, Man Ray was a pioneering artist whose radical approach to photography, painting, sculpture and film placed him at the centre of both the Dada and Surrealist movements.

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About the Gallery

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) is one of the world’s most well-loved landmark museums located on Fifth Avenue along Central Park’s Museum Mile in Manhattan, New York. Renowned for its monumental Beaux-Arts architecture and encyclopedic collection, it also presents an exceptional showing of contemporary art.

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1000 Fifth Avenue
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New York
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Daily, 10am – 5pm
Friday – Saturday, 10am – 9pm
Closed Wednesday
(1)
New York 1000 Fifth Avenue, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art contemporary art institution in New York United States
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue, NY, New York, United States
+1 212 535 7710
http://www.metmuseum.org

Opening hours
Daily, 10am – 5pm
Friday – Saturday, 10am – 9pm
Closed Wednesday
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