A telephone receiver that morphs into a lobster. A miniature train that rushes from a fireplace.

These are just a few of the familiar images associated with Surrealism, a revolutionary idea sparked in Paris around 1924 that asserted the unconscious and dreams over the familiar and everyday. While Surrealism has generated often poetic and even humorous works, it has also been taken up by artists around the world as a weapon in the struggle for political, social, and personal freedom.

Nearly from its inception, Surrealism has had an international scope, but knowledge of the movement has been formed primarily through a Western European focus. Join Stephanie D’Alessandro, the Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and Senior Research Coordinator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met, and explore this exhibition, which reconsiders the true “movement” of Surrealism beyond boundaries of geography and chronology—and within networks that span Eastern Europe to the Caribbean, Asia to North Africa, and Australia to Latin America. Including examples from almost eight decades and produced across at least 45 countries, Surrealism Beyond Borders offers a fresh appraisal of some of the collective concerns and exchanges—as well as historical, national, and local distinctions—that will recast appreciation of this most revolutionary and globe-spanning movement.