The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s holdings of 20th-century art just got even more impressive. The museum has announced that investor and philanthropist John Pritzker is gifting 188 Surrealist and Dada works to the museum. This marks the culmination of the 30-year process of constructing the Bluff Collection, as the group of Pritzker’s works is called.
Influential photographer Man Ray was key to Pritzker’s understanding of the period covered by his donation. “As I’ve built the collection, Man Ray has been a central figure, especially as a person who moved between groups and connected ideas,” he said in a statement shared by the Met. “Together, this group broke down barriers of what defined a painting, sculpture, text, or photograph and more — what art itself could be.” It’s fitting, then, that the public’s first major look at the donated works will be in the museum’s “Man Ray: When Objects Dream” exhibition, which opens on September 14 and runs until February 1, 2026. Other artists represented in the Bluff Collection include Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp, Jean Crotti and Kurt Schwitters.
The Pritzker family’s support for art and design is well-known. Earlier this year, John Pritzker’s cousin Jennifer Pritzker donated Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House to Loyola University along with $1 million to maintain the property.
