“A Surreal Lens: Photography from the Figge Collection," at the Figge Art Museum -- December 20 through June 21.
Saturday, December 20, through Sunday, June 21
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
For the Davenport's final new exhibition of 2025, the Figge Art Museum will be taking an up-close-and-personal look at some of its most arresting in-house works in A Surreal Lens: Photography from the Figge Collection, a celebration of the medium on display in the Lewis Gallery from dacember 20 through June 21.
Photography is often viewed as a tool for objective documentation, but from its earliest days, artists have used the medium to distort and transform reality. Through techniques including montage, double exposure, retouching, darkroom edits, and digital manipulation, photographers have long explored the space between the real and the imagined.
A Surreal Lens features artists who craft dreamlike imagery – whether through elaborate set-ups or post-production edits – that challenge our perceptions. While not all identify with Surrealism, their work taps into its spirit focusing on the subconscious, the uncanny, and the absurd. Featured artists include Alan Cohen, György Kepes, Olivia Parker, Kenda North, Michael Stone, Linda Connor, Emmet Gowin, Barbara Morgan, Otmar Thormann, Hans Breder, and others. Together, their work invites viewers to reconsider what a photograph can be.
Davenport's Figge Art Museum is the premier art exhibition and education facility between Chicago and Des Moines. Its landmark glass building on the banks of the Mississippi River, designed by British architect David Chipperfield, is home to one of the Midwest’s finest art collections, and presents world-class traveling exhibitions. Its studios, auditorium and spacious lobby are alive with art classes, lectures and special events that attract visitors of all ages.
The Figge was formed as the Davenport Municipal Art Gallery in 1925, with the passage of a law allowing the city to accept of a gift of 334 artworks from a former mayor, Charles A. Ficke, and open a museum. It was renamed the Davenport Museum of Art in 1987. It continued to be a city-run museum until the opening of its new building in 2005, which was named in honor of a major gift from the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Foundation. At that time, the city transferred responsibility for management, care and exhibition of its collection to the Figge Art Museum, a nonprofit organization. Ficke’s original collection of European, American and Spanish Viceregal art has grown through the efforts of generations of philanthropists and civic leaders and now includes the Grant Wood Archive and works by other American Regionalist artists, an extensive collection of Haitian art, and contemporary works. The Figge is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
A Surreal Lens: Photography from the Figge Collection will be on display in the Davenport museum's Lewis Gallery from December 20 through June 21, with regular museum hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays through Saturdays (10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays) and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays. Museum admission is $8-14, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
