When Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) wrote Life imitates art far more than art imitates life, he set of a chain reaction that has reverberated ever since. Adding, “the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression, and art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may release that energy,”  he might well have been speaking of the interesting times in which we now live. With that in mind, DART offers a sampling of continuing and upcoming shows about Surrealism on view in NYC.Above: Leonore Carrington, n/d

Leonara Carrington | the Shape of Dreams at L’Space

I’ve always had access to other worlds. We all do because we dream.—Leonora Carrington

Organized in collaboration with Consigna Gallery of Mexico City and with the support of the Leonora Carrington Council, the tightly curated exhibition brings together significant bronze sculptures as well as several jewelry pieces that echo her singular approach to sculpture. Above: Carrington works in Mexico

The exhibition presents a significant selection of Carrington's bronze sculptures, such as Catwoman, The Ship of Cranes, The Palmist [detail below] and Unknown all produced during her lifetime. Emerging directly from the same visionary universe as her paintings, these works translate her mythological figures, hybrid beings, and symbolic language into three-dimensional form. At once intimate and monumental, the sculptures embody Carrington's enduring exploration of transformation, mysticism, and the subconscious her figures appearing to step out of her canvases and into physical space.

A central experiential component of the exhibition is an interactive Tarot Reading Booth, an immersive installation rooted in Carrington's lifelong engagement with esoteric systems and divination. Visitors are invited to select a card from a tarot deck that Carrington herself designed and encounter her voice reconstructed through AI technology in English, Spanish, and French as it delivers a reading. The installation creates an intimate bridge between the physical presence of the sculptures and the artist's own narrative and spiritual vision.

The booth was designed by the Leonora Carrington Council and originally fabricated for Sacred Talismans, an exhibition presented at André Breton's house in 2024–2025 in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, celebrating the centenary of Surrealism. Conceived as an interactive display for historical objects including Carrington's tarot cards, the booth makes its United States debut with this presentation. Click for an overview of Carrington’s art and life.

Through July 25 at L’Space Gallery, 524 West 19^th Street, New York, NY Info

Dali | The Great Years at Di Donna

Between 1929 and 1939, Dalí produced the most psychologically raw, formally inventive, and revolutionary work of his life. In a single decade, he shattered the conventions of painting, collaborated with Luis Buñuel on films that scandalized Paris, designed for Coco Chanel, wrote a scenario for the Marx Brothers, and arrived in New York-where galleries, collectors, and the press transformed him from a Surrealist provocateur into one of the most famous artists in the world.

In this period, Dalí also dramatically expanded Surrealism's reach beyond the painted canvas through his development of the "Surrealist Object." Extending the principles of the movement into three-dimensions, as seen in the Vénus de Milo aux Tiroirs (Venus de Milo with Drawers) (1936/64), Dalí placed familiar objects together in an incongruous and outlandish manner to achieve a form with a sole purpose of furthering the human imagination. The decade also saw the artist make forays into design, film, theater, and commercial culture, including collaborations with fashion designers and cultural patrons like Elsa Schiaparelli and Gabrielle Chanel-broadening the place of Surrealism through the infiltration of the uncanny into every register of modern life.

Bringing together paintings, works on paper, and sculpture from major private and public collections-including the Dalí Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art-alongside archival material, the show traces Dalí's creative evolution across a period of extraordinary ambition and restless experimentation.

Through June 13 at Di Donna Galleries, 744 Madison Avenue, New York, NY Info

Eileen Agar | Leaves of the World at Kreps

“My life is a collage, with time cutting and arranging the materials and laying them down, overlapping and contrasting.”

Throughout her career Eileen Agar maintained a tenuous relationship with surrealism, taking cues from concurrent movements like cubism, and abstraction, while simultaneously interjecting a consistent irreverence and wit. The result was a deeply personal artistic language that linked diverse forms and objects through both spiritual, and formal relationships, as well as her own autobiography. Including works made between 1927 and 1980, Leaves of the World underscores the enduring importance of collage to her work, not only as a technique, but a way of synthesizing the kaleidoscopic references, and ongoing conversations with artists and writers that informed her work. 

While the second world war had a profound impact on Agar’s practice, she approached her work with a renewed vigor at the end of the 1940s. Paint became increasingly alchemical, as she experimented with poured enamel, and introduced geometric forms that both defined figurative elements and created windows into the complex architecture of her compositions Agar would continue to experiment freely with material throughout her life, but it was this persistent curiosity and sense of artistic freedom that unites her work, stating, “to play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic. In play the mind is prepared to accept the unimagined and incredible, to enter a world where different laws apply, to be free, unfettered and divine.”

Through June 20 at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 22 Cortlandt Alley, New York, NY Info

Coming in June:

Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions at The Morgan Library & Museum (Murray Hill). Running June 26 through October 4, 2026, this major double-gallery exhibition connects 15th-century Italian roots directly to the esoteric, dreamlike inspirations of 20th-century Surrealist masters including Leonora Carrington. Above: Leonora Carrington, Arcana Tarot Deck, Fulgur Press

The Morgan will host a series of public programs which are sure to quickly sell out. Programs range from demonstrations on how to read Tarot to a symposium on historic and contemporary emanations of Tarot. Sign up here