NY’s Met bags major modern art injection

Nearly 200 works from the Dada and Surrealist movements, including “Ingres’ Violin” by Man Ray — the world’s most expensive photograph — will join the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection, it said Monday.

The donation of 188 works by US tycoon John Pritzker includes collages, paintings, photographs and works on paper by 37 artists including Ray, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst.

“Ingres’ Violin,” acquired for $12.4 million by Pritzker at auction in 2022, will be on display at the Met starting Sunday until February 1, as part of an exhibition dedicated to Ray.

The retrospective brings together 160 works by the US artist who was based in Paris and whose real name was Emmanuel Radnitzky.

It highlights his eponymous “Rayograph,” a type of photography created without a camera, placing objects between light-sensitive paper and a light source.

The donation of “Ingres’ Violin” which depicts the artist’s muse, the Queen of Montparnasse, as well as other iconic works by Ray and his contemporaries, is “a transformational gift to the Met,” said director Max Hollein.

The works will become part of the museum’s new wing dedicated to modern and contemporary art, which is set to open in 2030.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, founded in 1870, is the largest museum in the United States, with 5.7 million visitors in the year to the end of June 2025.

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