A Surrealist Wunderkammer is an ongoing project space devoted to the nature of humanity and the natural world from the perspectives of Surrealism, an international art and literary movement started by André Breton, Paul Éluard, and others in France during the 1920s. Included are more than 200 works from the museum’s collection or on long-term loan from the de Menil family and the Rock Foundation.
The exhibition features masks, figural sculptures, musical instruments, outmoded photographic and moving-image technologies, paintings, photographs, prints, found objects, tourist curios, fakes, and other objects that informed the imagination, political aesthetic, and varied artistic practices of Surrealism.
The idea for this single-gallery exhibition took shape in conversations between anthropologist Edmund S. Carpenter (1922–2011) and his mother-in-law, Dominique de Menil. Initially referred to as a “Surrealist closet,” the exhibition opened in 1999 as Witnesses—A Surrealist Wunderkammer. The title is a reference to Wunderkammern (“wonder rooms”), also known as cabinets of curiosities, which appeared in Europe by the 16th century as royal treasuries and storehouses for collections of art, natural marvels, and other unique relics.
