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

Opening the Boîte

To open a Boîte, one must stand it up on one of its short sides, setting it in a seemingly precarious vertical position, then lower the outer and inner trays which make up the largest faces of the folding box slowly to the table so as to reveal the wooden-framed structure of the Large Glass standing upright all along within this shell. This unusual, somewhat ostentatious opening mechanism illustrates the Boîte’s insistence on displaying rather than simply storing its contents. Its central exhibit confronts its beholder/handler assertively, already standing up; once fully unfolded, its pull-outs extended to form, together with this central panel, a long, folding wall of exhibition space, the Boîte hardly resembles a container with a clear inside and outside. 
 

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