Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise: The Museum of Metamorphosis Main Menu Introduction The Museum of Metamorphosis Catalogue essay The Seven Series of Boîtes …and Online Further Reading [bibliography page]

Boîtes in Museum Collections around the World

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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). 

This page has paths:

  1. Introduction Lauren Rooney

Contents of this path:

  1. Boîte (Series E, 1963) at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago
  2. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago
  3. Boîte-en-valise 0/XX (hors série), for Mary Reynolds, at the Art Institute of Chicago
  4. Boîte-en-valise 0/XX (hors série), for Katherine Dreier, at the Yale University Art Gallery
  5. Boîte-en-valise 0/XX (hors série), for Walter and Lou Arensberg, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
  6. Boîte-en-valise I/XX, for Peggy Guggenheim, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
  7. Boîte-en-valise II/XX, at the National Galleries, Scotland
  8. Boîte-en-valise IV/XX, for Henrietta Gomes, at Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole
  9. Boîte-en-valise IX/XX, for the MoMA, at the MoMA
  10. Boîte-en-valise XVII/XX, inscribed to the Yale University Art Gallery
  11. Boîte-en-valise XX/XX, for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam
  12. Boîte, Series F (1966), at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
  13. Boîte (Series B) at the Centre Pompidou
  14. Boîte (Series B) at the Archive of the Avant-Garde, Dresden
  15. Boîte (Series B) at the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota
  16. Boîte (Series B) at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
  17. Boîte (Series B) at SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
  18. Boîte (Series B) at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam
  19. Boîte (Series B) at the Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis
  20. Boîte (Series C, 1961) at the Centre Pompidou
  21. Boîte (Series C, 1958) at the Musées royaux des Beaux-arts de Belgique in Brussels
  22. Boîte (Series C, 1958) at the Baltimore Museum of Art
  23. Boîte (Series ?, probably C) at the National Gallery of Canada
  24. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA
  25. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
  26. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at Harvard Art Museums
  27. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the National Gallery of Art
  28. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Denver Art Museum
  29. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art
  30. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Pérez Art Museum Miami
  31. Boîte (Series D, 1961) at the Fondazione MUSEION. Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea Bolzano in Bolzano, Italy
  32. Boîte (Series E) at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm
  33. Boîte (Series E) at the Cincinnati Art Museum
  34. Boîte (Series E) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  35. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - Gift of Anne d'Harnoncourt, 1994
  36. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art - Gift of Mme Marcel Duchamp (i.e., Alexina "Teeny" Duchamp), 1994
  37. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at MoMA
  38. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Walker Art Center: Museum Tombstone Information:
  39. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Centre Pompidou
  40. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Whitney Museum of American Art
  41. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Cleveland Museum of Art
  42. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne
  43. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin
  44. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Portland Art Museum
  45. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
  46. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
  47. Boîte (Series F, 1966) at the Fonds régional d'art contemporain (FRAC) Poitou-Charentes
  48. Boîte (Series G, 1968) at the Musée d'art moderne de Paris
  49. Boîte (Series G, 1968) at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm
  50. Boîte (unknown series) at the National Museum of Art, Osaka
  51. Boîte (unknown series) in the collections of the Museums of the City of Strasbourg