The Metropolitan Museum of Art is opening a major exhibition titled "Man Ray: When Objects Dream" on September 14, 2025, featuring 64 rayographs and about 100 other works by the artist from his most productive period in the late 1910s and 1920s. Curators Stephanie D'Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson aim to separate fact from the artist's own mythology, while the exhibition's centerpiece is "Le Violon d'Ingres" (1924), the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction, purchased by museum trustee John Pritzker for $12.4 million at Christie's in 2022. The show also includes a previously unannounced promised gift of 188 artworks by Man Ray and his Dada and Surrealist cohort from Pritzker.
This exhibition matters because it reexamines the legacy of a pivotal modern artist through rigorous scholarship, challenging long-held myths while showcasing the rayograph technique that Man Ray described as "working directly with light itself." The inclusion of the record-breaking photograph and the major Pritzker donation underscores the intersection of art historical research, philanthropy, and the booming market for modernist photography, making the Met a key destination for both scholars and collectors. The show offers a rare opportunity to see a concentrated body of work that the curators argue provides a key to understanding Man Ray's entire career.