Image: Joan Miró. Human Rights, 1974. Litograph on paper. Collection of the Akron Art Museum, Gift of Mark Sheraton 1981.29
The Akron Art Museum will open ‘The Surrealist Impulse’ on September 23, 2026, inaugurating the newly created Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries on the second floor of the museum’s historic 1899 building. The exhibition, on view through September 12, 2027, will examine the connections among Dada, Surrealism and related work by Art Brut artists—creators described by the museum as untrained or “raw.”
Drawing from the collections of the Parker Foundation, The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Akron Art Museum, the exhibition will bring together works by artists including Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, Kay Sage, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp and Jean Dubuffet. The presentation will consider the varied styles, techniques and materials used by artists who sought images that could function as “magic windows” onto imaginary scenes.
The museum describes Dada as an international movement that emerged in the aftermath of the First World War. Its artists and writers transformed their disgust at wartime destruction into an absurdist critique of cultural and social conventions. Surrealism developed from Dada and became a broad international movement whose influence extended across the visual arts, literature, theatre, film and music.
The exhibition’s account of Surrealism will be grounded in André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, which called for a revolution in moral and social conventions and in life itself. Breton advocated a new mode of creation flowing from the unrestricted subconscious. The exhibition will connect that idea to practices involving dreams, hypnotic visions, séances, games, chance and experimentation.
The museum’s selection will also address the movement’s wide range of sources, including artists’ imaginations and subconscious, chance encounters, Indigenous art and artifacts from North America and Oceania, and the work of children, outsider artists and people housed in mental-health facilities. Examples listed by the museum include Salvador Dalí’s ‘Les Montres gélatines de l’espace temps (The Frozen Watches of Space Time)’ (1974), Joan Miró’s ‘Human Rights’ (1974), René Magritte’s ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (1962), Paul Delvaux’s ‘Le village des sirènes’ (1942) and two works by Victor Brauner.
The Paparella Galleries are intended to provide dedicated space for the Akron Art Museum to deepen the presentation of its collection through loans from peer institutions, while also highlighting works already held by the museum. ‘The Surrealist Impulse’ was made possible by loans from the Parker Foundation and The Museum of Modern Art through Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network. Support comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Mary and Dr. George L. Demetros Charitable Trust, the Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust and the Ohio Arts Council.
