The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp in over 50 years, organized in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition features approximately 300 works, including iconic pieces like "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" and "Fountain," organized in a strict linear chronology. This approach highlights Duchamp’s practice of remaking and replicating his own work, presenting replicas only at the point in time they were physically created rather than as stand-ins for lost originals.
This retrospective is significant because it reclaims Duchamp as a hands-on "inventor" and maker rather than just the detached father of conceptualism. By showcasing the physical evolution of his ideas—including his multi-sensory and spatial experiments—the show connects his mid-century radicalism to contemporary artistic practices. It also reaffirms his authorship of "Fountain" amidst recent art historical debates, positioning his recursive and often delayed processes as central to his enduring influence on the 21st-century art world.