In the past few years, a 100-year-old artistic movement—Surrealism—has become one of the hottest topics in the art world, with a wave of exhibitions celebrating its history and a growing number of contemporary painters finding inspiration in its dreamlike aesthetic. Some of this buzz is due to the scholarship of Matthew Affron, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s modern art curator. He co-curated the international touring exhibition “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100,” which concluded its two-year run in Philadelphia in February, and also wrote the accompanying catalogue. The show expanded the roster of artists usually associated with the movement to include women like Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. “We think about ways of telling these stories for a new generation,” Affron says. In October, PMA will open the second and final installment of the first Marcel Duchamp retrospective in the U.S. in more than 50 years, organized in collaboration with MOMA. “Whether it’s the great story of Surrealism, or the career of Duchamp,” he says, “we’re looking at them from new angles.”
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