Deplorably passé in Montmartre and Montparnasse even before the war, surrealism has a new lease on life along Park Avenue and in the 57th Street galleries.
Klaus Mann, 1943

This volume brings the complex networks that fostered and sustained surrealism in North America into academic focus. Who — among collectors, critics, dealers, galleries, and other kinds of mediating agents — supported the artists in the surrealist orbit, in what ways, and why? What more can be learned about highprofile collectors such as the de Menils in Houston or Peggy Guggenheim in New York? Compared to their peers in Europe, did artists in the United States use similarly spectacular strategies of publicity and mediation? In what networks did the commercial galleries operate, locally and internationally, and how did they dialogue with museums? This book offers an innovative and lasting contribution to research and scholarship on the history of art in America, while focusing specifically on the expansion and reception of surrealism in the United States.