The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s main gallery, dedicated to Marcel Duchamp, has always been a source of shock. Located at the end of the museum’s north wing, it is a mecca for contemporary art pilgrims seeking contact with an enigmatic 20th century figure who helped redefine what is considered art, which is pretty much everything.
But those who visit this space today may be shocked by what it doesn’t contain.
disappeared Nude woman descending the stairs (Part 2)a 1912 modernist work that depicts the human body in motion and made Duchamp a bad name in the art world. One of the gallery’s most notorious residents is noticeably absent. fountaina seemingly nondescript white porcelain urinal whose entry into the visual lexicon has delighted and outraged art fans for decades.
Seventeen works by Duchamp are gone from this gallery alone, and a total of 92 from the PMA’s permanent collection, whose disappearance has left visitors perplexed in recent weeks.
But the disruption to the way Duchamp’s main gallery has been shown for decades is temporary. The missing work is on loan to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where it will be included in the first Duchamp retrospective in North America in more than 50 years. The MOMA exhibit opens April 9, and Duchamp’s work returns to Philadelphia in October, where it will remain on display for more than three months.
A related Duchamp retrospective sponsored by Center Pompidou will be held at the Paris Museum of Fine Arts from March to July 2027.
Losing so many works to MOMA meant leaving a big hole in PMA, which is the owner of the world’s largest collection of Duchamp materials and attracts Duchamp enthusiasts from all over the world. So Matthew Afron, head of the Duchamp Collection at PMA, decided to turn back the clock.
For now, and at least for the next few months, the Duchamp Gallery will be reminiscent of the way it was set up in 1954, with some of the exact same works on display.
Rather than being a collection of a single artist, the new wall hangings present Duchamp’s work in dialogue with contemporaries such as Picasso, Juan Gris, Piet Mondrian and Georges Braque.
This installation spotlights the unique relationship between Duchamp and PMA. The museum was a particularly fruitful encounter for artists, curators, and collectors. And that relationship paid dividends. Many of the works in the current temporary exhibition “Marcel Duchamp, Curator” were originally acquired by major collectors Louise and Walter Ahrensberg with Duchamp’s assistance.
“Duchamp had a side job as an independent broker and dealer of art, and he helped the Ahrensburgs acquire many works, not only of himself, but of many other artists he admired,” said Afron, the museum’s curator of contemporary art. “So Duchamp was involved in the acquisition of some of those works.”
“The program recognizes his very important role in first helping the Arensbergs put together the collection over 30 years and then helping them install it here after it arrived as a gift,” Afron said.
Some of Duchamp’s works have not been released into the world, and others could not have been released easily.
A bride stripped naked by bachelorsalso known as big glass (completed in 1923) still towers over the room, anchored firmly to the floor. (A replica of the work realized by artist Richard Hamilton will be part of the MOMA show.)
And Duchamp’s most enigmatic work remains in its dark hiding place.
After making his mark in the avant-garde, Duchamp turned his attention to chess and, as far as the world knows, spent the last 24 years of his life playing tournaments and working on chess theory. However, after Duchamp’s death in 1968, it was revealed that he had been secretly working in his New York studio for 20 years on his last major work, which was scheduled to be exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
A 25-year-old curatorial assistant at the PMA named Anne d’Arnoncourt arranged the purchase of the work, oversaw the exhibition, and the museum opened it to the public in 1969.
A work with an elaborate name Given (Given: 1. Waterfall, 2. Lighting gas) — More experienced than seen. As visitors enter the dark, empty space, they may notice a set of crude wooden doors surrounded by brick arches. If you look closely, you’ll see that there are two peepholes in the door.
Through the peephole and beyond a break in the brick wall is a sculptural tableau. A naked woman lies in a lush landscape with her legs spread and one arm lifting a gas lamp into the air.
Arcadia or crime scene? I can’t explain anything.
Artist Jasper Johns described it as “the strangest work of art in any museum.”
Afron said the museum was initially concerned about the work’s “sexual frankness.”
“When they were thinking about how to launch to the general public, they didn’t want a scandal. [Duchamp] “The family didn’t want any scandal either. So what they decided to do was to have a completely quiet opening. Well, the number of visitors to the museum reportedly doubled in the first week, so it clearly worked.”
At the same time, d’Arnoncourt rewrote: big glass He transformed the gallery into the Monograph Marcel Duchamp Gallery, and “it’s been that way ever since,” Afron said.
For all the amazing firepower, givensome museum visitors walk past that niche without realizing it’s there.
Of course, d’Arnoncourt became the director of the museum. After her death in 2008, the gallery was renamed, but what is it called? It’s either the Musee Anne d’Arnoncourt or the Galerie Rose Seravi (‘Rose Seravi’ being Duchamp’s female alter ego), depending on where you stand against the lenticular gallery label that flickers between either name.
to this day given and big glass It remains as if two large suns exert their gravity on the smaller works around them.
The current temporary environment juxtaposes Duchamp with his contemporaries, and also displays works by other Duchamp brothers in an adjacent gallery, highlighting both what Duchamp has in common with other artists of his time and how radical a departure he represents. big glass It came from their work.
“Duchamp distanced himself from the art world, but he was not completely cut off from it,” Afron says. In it, “he carved a very special place.”
The works of artists such as Picasso, Léger, and Mondrian line the walls of d’Arnoncourt/Gallery Rose Seravi are innovative. But Afron says: “They were still part of a continuum and were thinking about some of the same issues that their predecessors were thinking about in terms of how to compose images and how to be creative about the means of representing things.”
big glassOn the other hand, the use of transparent (glass) canvas breaks down the two-dimensionality. Although Duchamp uses some traditional materials, he also uses surprisingly non-traditional materials such as electrician’s tape, optician’s chart motifs, and dust.
“It doesn’t represent his own hands. It doesn’t represent his own emotions,” Afron says. “He took these hard materials that were associated with the mechanical technology of the modern world, mixed them with paint, experimented with them, stepped away from that precedent, and tried to do things that no one knew.”
Works by Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Suzanne Duchamp, “Marcel Duchamp, Curator” and “The Duchamp Brothers and Sisters,” as well as “Large Glass” and “Etan Donne,” are on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (Galleries 281, 282, 283). philamuseum.org215-763-8100.
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