The Rose Art Museum Announces 2025 Spring Exhibitions

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University has announced its highly anticipated 2025 Spring exhibition season, presenting two new dynamic and thought-provoking exhibitions: Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver and Surrealism(s) – Then & Now.

The new shows will be on view alongside the museum’s current ongoing exhibition, Hugh Hayden: Home Work. Opening on January 22, these exhibitions examine surrealism's enduring influence, its evolving expressions, and its power to illuminate uncanny, dreamlike, irrational, and unconscious aspects of the human psyche.

“The 2025 Spring season offers an enthralling journey that bridges the legacies of twentieth century Surrealism with visionary contemporary art,” said Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator. “By challenging us to re-examine our perception of reality, this suite of exhibitions expands how we see and experience life, and inspires a deeper understanding of exterior and interior worlds.”

LEONORA CARRINGTON: DREAM WEAVER

January 22–June 1, 2025

Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver, the artist’s first museum exhibition in New England, brings together over thirty works spanning six decades of Carrington’s prolific creativity. Born into an Anglo-Irish family, Carrington rebelled against societal gender constraints, finding refuge in art and literature. Her journey led her to join the Surrealist movement in Europe and later move to Mexico, where she developed her visionary style. This exhibition showcases her creative and technical versatility, offering insight into her artistic process of conjuring fantastical worlds rich in magic and symbolism. Dream Weaver unveils the complexities of Carrington’s compositions, which draw on biography, folklore, mysticism, religion, and the occult, reflecting the unbridled imagination of an artist on a profound quest to unravel the mysteries of the world.

Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver is curated by Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator, Rose Art Museum and Professor of Fine Arts and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University.

SURREALISM(S) – THEN & NOW

January 22–June 1, 2025

Surrealism(s) – Then & Now celebrates the centennial of the Surrealist movement, tracing its evolution from 1924 to its enduring legacy today. The exhibition, drawn exclusively from the museum's permanent collection, highlights the global “Surrealist turn,” presenting photography, painting, and sculpture from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Works by artists, including William Baziotes, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Hayv Karahman, René Magritte, Tracy Moffatt, Tony Oursler, Kay Sage, Yve Tanguys, and many others, explore dreams, myths, and the unconscious. The art featured in this exhibition reflects how “then & now,” in times of chaos and fragmentation, when rational perspectives fail to explain human complexities, artists turn to hidden terrains and invisible truths, using surreal forms of expression to decipher the enigma of existence.

Surrealism(s) – Then & Now is curated by Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator, Rose Art Museum and Professor of Fine Arts and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University, and Chad Sirois, Associate Director of Communications and Marketing.

HUGH HAYDEN: HOME WORK

Through June 1, 2025

Hugh Hayden: Home Work, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New England, surveys a decade of his work. The show highlights his evocative sculptures, inspired by craft-based furniture and objects, that delve into the artist’s critical exploration of the “American dream.” Hayden explains, “All of my work is about the American dream, whether it’s a table that’s hard to sit at or a thorny school desk. It’s a dream that is seductive but difficult to inhabit.” Organized into five thematic sections, Home Work reveals that discomfort and even danger often lie hidden within the spaces we find most familiar.
Hugh Hayden: Home Work is curated by Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster and Chief Curator, Rose Art Museum and Professor of Fine Arts and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University, and Dr. Sarah Montross, Chief Curator of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Trustees.

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