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Marcel Duchamp: The Box in a Valise installed in the Hood Museum's Lathrop Gallery. Photo by Jeffrey Nintzel.
Location
Temporary Exhibitions, Lathrop Gallery
About
Marcel Duchamp described his Boîte-en-valise (Box in a Valise) as a “portable museum” that would allow him to carry around his life’s work in a traveling box. The artist spent five years, between 1935 and 1940, recreating his oeuvre in miniature through photographs, hand-colored reproductions, and diminutive models. These facsimiles of the artist’s major paintings, drawings, and sculpture were then placed in imitation-leather boxes or valises that he would spend the rest of his life assembling. Duchamp’s most significant works are cleverly arranged inside each box like a traveling salesman’s wares; open the lid and you find a treasure trove of art objects all reproduced on a miniature scale. The Hood Museum of Art recently acquired an important example of the Box in a Valise edition. This work, which the artist housed in a red linen-lined box about the size of a large attaché case, will be shown at Dartmouth College for the first time in this installation.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and made possible by the Cissy Patterson Fund and the Hansen Family Fund.
Exhibition Curator
Michael R. Taylor