The exhibition coincides with the Metropolitan Opera premiere of the new opera The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Curated by Dodie Kazanjian and Donatien Grau, Super Duper opens September 21 throughout the Metropolitan Opera House
New York, NY (September 16, 2025)—Gallery Met is pleased to announce Super Duper, an ambitious exhibition curated by Dodie Kazanjian and philologist Donatien Grau. Coinciding with the company premiere of Mason Bates’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay—a new opera based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel set in the 1940s amid the rise of fascism in Europe—Super Duper draws on the opera’s story of two aspiring Jewish comic-book creators who invent a superhero to fight tyranny and inspire hope. The exhibition reflects how the superhero, a cultural archetype born in America and embraced worldwide, might be reinvented in our own time.
Opening simultaneously with the opera’s premiere on September 21, Super Duper brings together more than 20 artists from multiple generations, each contributing a new work that reimagines what superheroes might mean today. The only case of pre-existing work are two pieces by legendary comic artist Art Spiegelman, who has long explored courage in the face of rising fascism. Collectively, these works probe a provocative question: What does a superhero look like in our time?
From Jamian Juliano-Villani’s irreverent visions to Toyin Ojih Odutola’s moving portraiture, Rashid Johnson’s layered symbolism, and Maurizio Cattelan’s brilliant wit, the exhibition offers deeply personal responses to the theme. Super Duper features works by Joe Bradley, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Chan, Roz Chast, Ian Cheng, George Condo, John Currin, Hadi Falapishi, Rachel Feinstein, Cy Gavin, Sally Han, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Rashid Johnson, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Ella Kruglyanskaya, Eddie Martinez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Anna Park, Nicolas Party, pascALEjandro, Rachel Rose, Julian Schnabel, Dana Schutz, Art Spiegelman, and Anna Weyant.
Installed throughout the grand spaces of the Metropolitan Opera House, Super Duper transforms the building into a contemporary cabinet of wonders, where art, opera, and the mythos of the superhero converge.
For the curators, it was essential to invite a wide range of artists whose practices span painting, sculpture, drawing, and multimedia, and whose backgrounds reflect the global circulation of the superhero figure. While rooted in narrative traditions, the works expand far beyond storytelling. They explore superheroes as open-ended possibilities—animals, myths, or abstract forms—figures that suggest new ways of inhabiting and acting in the world. By challenging the familiar image of the human superhero, Super Duper opens the field to alternative identities and forms of power. Each work becomes a projection of what it means to seek a model, to imagine transcendence, or to find strength in vulnerability.
At the Met, a place devoted to epic storytelling, Super Duper extends this tradition into the visual arts. The exhibition invites audiences to reconsider the stories we tell about heroes—past and present—and to encounter the many ways contemporary artists are reshaping one of America’s most enduring cultural symbols.
The curators would like to thank Sandy Heller for his support of Super Duper.
Donatien Grau is a scholar, editor, author, and museum executive. He has published widely on the arts and culture of the Roman Empire, on 19th- and 20th-century literary and art history, as well as on contemporary art and culture, dedicating numerous publications to museums and their thinking. Over the years, he has remained a close friend and collaborator to artists across disciplines, while retaining a practice of classical philology. He is the author of such books as The Age of Creation (Sternberg, 2013), Living Museums (Hatje Cantz, 2020), Under Discussion. The Encyclopedic Museum (Getty, 2021), and De Civitate Angelorum (Yvon Lambert, 2022). He is the head of contemporary programs at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, as well as the editor-in-chief and artistic director of Alphabet Magazine.
Dodie Kazanjian is the founder and curator of Gallery Met, an initiative launched in 2006 to bring contemporary art to the Metropolitan Opera. She has covered and written about artists and the art world for Vogue since 1989. In addition to Gallery Met, she founded Art&Newport, which develops and hosts citywide visual arts presentations in Newport, Rhode Island. Her books include Icons: The Absolutes of Style, Dodie Goes Shopping, and Alex: The Life of Alexander Liberman, co-authored with her husband, Calvin Tomkins.