Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise: The Museum of Metamorphosis

Boîtes in Museum Collections around the World

Between 1941 and 1949, Duchamp inscribed three of his twenty-four deluxe Boîtes-en-valise to museums, and the remaining twenty-one to private individuals. Since then, at least seven of the twenty-one privately inscribed Boîtes-en-valise, alongside a considerable share of the standard Boîtes, have found their way into public collections, and from there, in virtual form, into the even more widely accessible collection of artworks visible on the Internet. In tracking Duchamp's "portable museum" through the many museums into which it has ventured, this page aims to facilitate comparisons between individual Boîtes and, in a mise-en-abîme appropriate to the artwork at hand, between ways in which Duchamp's artwork is digitally exhibited. It does not claim to be exhaustive, but will hopefully be updated periodically in order to better represent the distribution of Boîtes in museums worldwide.  

Currently, the map locates 51 out of approximately 300 Boîtes, or about one sixth of the edition. All but a few entries feature an image of the particular Boîte as shown on the website of the museum in question, but since museums often include many interesting images of their Boîtes, sometimes featuring a Zoom function, on their collection websites, I recommend clicking on the "details" of images that intrigue you and following the hyperlink to the relevant museum website. Map entries for standard Boîtes feature the tombstone information provided by their home museums, whereas entries for deluxe Boîtes-en-valise feature short individual descriptions, the corresponding tombstone information stored in annotations accessible on the Boîtes' individual media pages (simply click on the entry to get there). 

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