November 2024

The Madison Art Collection is happy to announce that the VMFA's Salvador Dalí: Les Chants de Maldoror will be on show in the Lisanby Museum in Spring 2024. 

Between 1933 and 1934, Salvador Dalí created 44 illustrations for Les Chants de Maldoror, a fantastical 1869 text written by Isidore Ducasse, better known by his pen name, the Comte de Lautréamont. Lautréamont’s book had nearly vanished into obscurity when it was rediscovered in the 1920s by the French Surrealists, who championed its rebellious spirit and bizarre prose—elements Dalí complemented with an arsenal of personal visions drawn from his creative subconscious. Celebrating the 2024 Centennial Anniversary of the founding of the Surrealist movement, and in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts—which recently acquired the complete set of etchings that the artist made for the original 1934 edition—this exhibition presents Dalí’s astonishing Maldoror prints with researched didactic materials by W&L students, as well as Surrealist catalogs and ephemera from the collection of Dr. Elliott King, Associate Professor of Art History at W&L.  

The exhibition is co-curated by Professor King and Dr. Michael R. Taylor, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education at the VMFA. This exhibition was organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.