This chapter examines Surrealist curatorial practice from its emergence in the 1920s until the last group exhibition prior to André Breton’s death in 1966. Rooted in the agitational French and German Dada demonstrations that immediately preceded them, Surrealist exhibitions aimed to transform their viewers through an evolving set of tactics that diverged markedly from normative gallery display practices. The chapter proposes that by recourse initially to the discursive, then to the tactile, and finally through fully immersive environments, these complex and often elaborate installations aimed to cultivate sensual, politicized, and postnational subjects. Eschewing those detached models of modernism that aimed either to privilege abstraction or to maintain medium specificity, the exhibitions curated by the Surrealists over half a century give shape to a coherent curatorial practice that engaged with some of the hallmark discourses and experiences of the twentieth century.

Over the course of his life, Frederick Douglass routinely made use of photography, as art object, political instrument, and metaphor with a particular investment in the relationship between image making, freedom, and progress. The frequency with which he sat for photographic portraits has earned him the status as the most photographed man in the nineteenth century. Douglass’s images circulated widely as collectable cartes-de-visites and in personal and political albums. The photographs’ networks of circulation are crucial to understanding Douglass’s photographic practice.