Met Museum's surreal windfall
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has secured one of its most significant modern art boosts in decades, with nearly 200 works from the Dada and Surrealist movements joining its collection in a landmark gift from billionaire collector and museum trustee John Pritzker.
The promised donation, announced on Monday, comprises 188 works by 37 artists including Man Ray, Jean Arp, Marcel and Suzanne Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lee Miller, Beatrice Wood, Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters.
The group, collectively known as the Bluff Collection, represents a sweeping survey of early 20th-century experimentation that questioned the very definition of art.
Among the treasures is Man Ray's iconic photograph Ingres' Violin (Le violon d'Ingres, 1924), depicting Kiki de Montparnasse with violin sound holes superimposed on her back.
Purchased by Pritzker at auction in 2022 for $12.4 million, the image became the world's most expensive photograph. It will go on public display at the Met from Sunday until February 1, forming the centrepiece of a major exhibition, Man Ray: When Objects Dream (14 September 2025-1 February 2026).
The retrospective brings together 160 works by Man Ray, born Emmanuel Radnitzky, an American émigré in Paris whose radical "rayographs" — photographic images created without a camera by placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper — revolutionised the medium.
"This is a transformational gift to the Met," museum director Max Hollein said. "It enhances our ability to offer a profound, more comprehensive view of these outstanding artists and enigmatic trailblazers of Modernism whose experimentation across media continues to fascinate and inspire."
The donation also includes collages, paintings, photographs and works on paper, all of which will eventually form part of the Met's new wing for modern and contemporary art, scheduled to open in 2030.
A collector's vision
The Metropolitan Museum, founded in 1870, remains the United States' largest museum, drawing 5.7 million visitors in the year to June 2025. For Pritzker, the gift represents a personal passion project.
"I've long been interested in the period between the world wars and the exciting community of artists involved in Dada and Surrealism," he said in a statement. "As I've built the collection, Man Ray has been a central figure, especially as a person who moved between groups and connected ideas."
That network of ideas was crucial. Figures such as Duchamp and Picabia, like Man Ray, blurred boundaries between text, sculpture, painting and photography. "Together, this group broke down barriers of what defined a painting, sculpture, text or photograph, and more — what art itself could be," Pritzker added.
Alongside the artworks, Pritzker is gifting more than 100 books, pamphlets, journals and ephemera to the Met. His John Pritzker Family Fund will also finance a new research initiative, the Bluff Collaborative for Research on Dada and Surrealism, ensuring the collection not only decorates walls but also drives scholarship.
The announcement comes as the Met prepares for a $550 million expansion: the Oscar L Tang and HM Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, designed by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo — the first woman to design a wing in the museum's 155-year history.
Groundbreaking is expected next year, with completion in 2030. "This incredible promised gift arrives at a pivotal moment," Hollein said, "as we expand and invigorate our holdings in preparation for the opening of the Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art."
The Bluff Collection adds to a string of blockbuster donations the Met has received this year. In the spring, the museum accepted more than 6,500 objects from photography collector Artur Walther and his foundation, as well as over 500 Inuit prints from René Balcer and Carolyn Hsu-Balcer.