Duchamp at MoMA again
MoMA has opened a comprehensive Marcel Duchamp show—the museum’s first Duchamp retrospective in more than 50 years—and it will run through August 22. (x.com)
The Museum of Modern Art opened its first Marcel Duchamp retrospective in more than 50 years on April 12, putting nearly 300 works by the artist back at the center of New York museum-going. (moma.org) The show runs through August 22, 2026, on Floor 6 in the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions. MoMA said it spans six decades of Duchamp’s career and includes painting, sculpture, film, photography, drawings, and printed matter. (moma.org) (press.moma.org) MoMA said the last major Duchamp retrospective was the 1973 survey it organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This version was organized by Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo, and Matthew Affron. (press.moma.org) (artforum.com) Duchamp is the artist most closely tied to the “readymade,” his term for ordinary manufactured objects he presented as art. MoMA’s exhibition page says it is hard to answer the question “Why is this art?” without referring to his work. (moma.org) That question still sits inside much contemporary art, from conceptual work to installation and appropriation. MoMA said Duchamp’s influence runs across Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop, even though he resisted being pinned to any single movement. (moma.org) The checklist reaches from early paintings such as *Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2* from 1912 to later works including *The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even* from 1915–23, *Fountain* from 1917, *L.H.O.O.Q.* from 1919, and *Étant donnés* from 1946–66. The Philadelphia Museum of Art says the exhibition also includes *Box in a Valise*, Duchamp’s miniature portable version of his own oeuvre. (philamuseum.org) The show will not end in Manhattan. After MoMA, it travels to the Philadelphia Museum of Art from October 10, 2026, through January 31, 2027, and a Paris presentation is scheduled for spring 2027 at the Grand Palais. (philamuseum.org) (msn.com) For MoMA, the exhibition restores one of the museum’s foundational arguments about modern art in the building where many visitors first encounter it. For visitors, it offers the fullest New York survey of the artist’s work since 1973 — and four months to test Duchamp’s old provocation against the art on the walls now. (press.moma.org) (moma.org)
