Celebrating the Surrealist Centennial

Join the Art Students League as we celebrate Surrealist thinking and creation, past and present. Curators Natalie Dupêcher, PhD and Stephanie D'Alessandro, PhD will delve into Surrealism’s history and reception in the United States, especially through the League. In this conversation moderated by the League’s Curatorial Assistant Esther V. Moerdler, they will explore how the movement has transcended styles and mediums through its hundred-year history.

One hundred years ago, André Breton published the Manifesto of Surrealism, calling for us to tap into our dreams and imagination to access our childlike self and break from conformity. Though the movement began as a literary one, it quickly drew in visual artists with its incorporation of Freudian psychology and emphasis on automatism.

The Art Students League has long been enmeshed in the Surrealist movement with notable alumni including Man Ray, Hervé Télémaque, Lee Miller, Louis Bourgeois, Ralph Iwamoto, and Alexander Calder. Today, the movement continues, with more and more artists tapping into the uncanny within their works.  

‍

----

Natalie Dupêcher is the Associate Curator of Modern Art at the Menil Collection. Her recent exhibitions include Janet Sobel: All-Over (2024); Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition (2021-23), co-organized by the Menil Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Kunstmuseum Bern; and Photography and the Surreal Imagination (2020). Dupêcher curates, researches, and oversees the Menil’s landmark holdings of historical Surrealism. She holds a PhD from Princeton University and an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Stephanie D’Alessandro is the Leonard A. Lauder Curator for Modern Art and Senior Research Coordinator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where she curated Surrealism Beyond Borders in 2021. Previously, she was Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art. D’Alessandro has published widely on international modernism. She holds a BA from Dickinson College and her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago.

Esther V. Moerdler is the League’s Curatorial Assistant. She holds a BA in History and Art History from Barnard College and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art.

‍