The Bluff Collaborative for Research on Dada and Surrealism

The Bluff Collaborative for Research on Dada and Surrealism generates new scholarship on these revolutionary art movements by bringing together knowledge from the museum, archive, lab, and studio to advance fresh perspectives on the power of art and ideas in society today.

Dada and Surrealism were global artistic, literary, and intellectual movements that emerged in the wake of World War I. Artists associated with these movements in the interwar years rejected traditional practices and conventions alongside momentous political and social change and challenged norms and sparked new ways of thinking through provocation and dialogue.

With objects of art at the core of our study, The Bluff Collaborative merges historical and material research with contemporary thinking to offer a platform for new views and conversations. Through our shared program of study, lectures, performances, and more, we aim to inspire artists, scholars, and Museum visitors to find new meaning in history and to approach the uncertainties and challenges of our own time with curiosity, experimentalism, and a spirit of emergent collaboration.

For its inaugural year, The Bluff Collaborative program will be dedicated to the artist Man Ray in conjunction with the exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream (September 14, 2025–February 1, 2026). Future research programs will be announced annually.