The Museum of Modern Art in New York is launching the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp’s entire career in over fifty years, a landmark exhibition that will later travel to Philadelphia. Accompanying this resurgence of interest in avant-garde pioneers are two significant projects focused on women of the Surrealist movement: the publication of Alyce Mahon’s comprehensive new book on Dorothea Tanning and a specialized exhibition at London’s Freud Museum featuring Leonora Carrington’s 1940 painting 'Down Below'.
These concurrent events signal a robust institutional and academic effort to re-evaluate the Surrealist legacy through both its foundational figures and its often-overlooked female protagonists. By pairing Duchamp’s conceptual innovations with the psychological depth of Tanning and Carrington, the art world continues to expand the narrative of 20th-century modernism, highlighting how these artists navigated personal trauma and radical aesthetics during periods of global upheaval.