The Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, is hosting a Music & Maker's Night on May 14, featuring a guided tour of the exhibition "Get Surreal (A Surreal Lens)" led by Co-Senior Curator Joshua Johnson. The event includes an art-making activity and live music in the museum's Quad City Bank & Trust Grand Lobby. The exhibition explores how photographers from the earliest days of the medium have used techniques like montage, double exposure, and digital manipulation to distort reality and create dreamlike imagery, featuring works by artists such as Alan Cohen, György Kepes, Olivia Parker, and Emmet Gowin.
This event matters because it highlights how the Figge Art Museum, a key cultural institution between Chicago and Des Moines, engages the local community through accessible, free programming that combines art-making, live music, and curatorial insight. The exhibition itself challenges conventional views of photography as purely documentary, showcasing the medium's long history of surreal and imaginative expression. The Figge's role as a nonprofit museum with a rich history—from its founding in 1925 to its current home designed by David Chipperfield—underscores its importance in preserving and presenting art to diverse audiences.