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.

Each year we select a focus for our research, which is published as The Bluff Almanach. For its inaugural year, The Bluff Collaborative program was dedicated to the artist, Man Ray; for the 2026-27 year, we turn to the theme of "Echoes and Traces." Please be in touch with us for more information. Future research programs will be announced annually.