Box in a valise (Boîte-en-valise)

Duchamp … played the museum’s game – his way.

Elena Filipovic, curator and art historian, 2012

From the 1930s to the 1960s, French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made small suitcases, and later box sets, of his most important works in miniature. The replicas, each with their own tiny label, challenged the idea of the ‘unique art object’.

In creating these ‘portable museums’, Duchamp took on the role of artist, archivist, curator, and salesman. The art work functions simultaneously as a container for storage, cataloguing, display, and promotion.

Duchamp was a pioneer of modern and contemporary art. Boîte en valise captures everything from his world-famous urinal Fountain (1917) to The large glass (1915–23) – some of the key moments in 20th-century art.