The Thinker: A CMA Blog

Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography, is on view now through Sunday, January 11 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Through 167 photographs and illustrated books, the collection tells two stories: one of a radical moment in early twentieth-century art and the other of impassioned collector David Raymond, whose adventurous spirit and vision harmonized perfectly with his subject. In our ongoing video series surrounding the exhibition, we take an inside look at Forbidden Games and examine the definition and influence of surrealist photography.

The library’s rare book collection includes a deluxe edition of the catalogue for the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at Ronny Van de Velde, Antwerpen, in 1991. We’ve installed the volume in the display case in the reference room of the Ingalls Library to celebrate the museum’s fall exhibition Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography in the Kelvin & Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall.

The Cleveland Museum of Art's latest acquisitions include a Virgin and Child, a rare 13th-century wooden sculpture from the Mosan region of Europe; a Standing Female Figure, a clay figure representative of the Classic Veracruz period on Mexico’s Gulf Coast; and Just the two of us, one of contemporary artist Julia Wachtel’s first paintings to employ cartoons. The museum also announced the addition of eight photographs by Ansel Adams, a gift from Frances P. Taft, a longtime museum supporter and trustee.

"[Dora Maar] was one of Picasso’s best-known mistresses…but she was much more," said art collector and filmmaker David Raymond, whose once-beloved photograph are now owned and on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of the exhibition, Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. Since acquiring the collection, the CMA now boasts the largest grouping of photographs by Maar in the United States - and one of the largest in the world. Learn more in this video interview with Raymond and photo historian Ian Walker today, November 22 - Dora Maar's birthday.