The Katonah Museum of Art featured "The Art of the Puzzle: Astounding and Confounding" as its major exhibition for the Fall of 2000.
The displays included over 300 mechanical puzzles and more than 100 jigsaw puzzles, to show the history and development of puzzles over three centuries and across countries. Ingenuity of design, beauty and craftsmanship, technology, and the relationship between puzzle creator and puzzle solver were important themes of the exhibit. The two large galleries also showed how puzzles are used (in education as well as amusement) and how they reflected their social context.
The puzzles on display were drawn primarily from the collections of co-curators Jerry Slocum and Anne Williams. They have published numerous books and articles about mechanical and jigsaw puzzles, and collaborated to write the catalog for the exhibition.
The exhibition was open from October 15, 2000 through January 7, 2001.