“From October 14, 2023 to March 18, 2024, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presents Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy, curated by Paul B. Franklin, a Paris-based art historian and an internationally acclaimed expert on the life and work of Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968). This is the very first exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection devoted exclusively to Duchamp, among the most influential and innovative artists of the twentieth century and a longtime friend and adviser to the American patron Peggy Guggenheim.

Marcel Duchamp and the Lure of the Copy features some sixty artworks dating from 1911 to 1968. These include iconic objects from the permanent collection of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, such as Nude (Sketch), Sad Young Man in a Train (1911) and the de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy (Boîte-en-valise) (1935–41), as well as from other Italian and American institutions, including the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition also presents several lesser-known artworks in private hands, including the artist’s estate. Furthermore, fully half of the pieces on display come from the distinguished Venetian collection of Attilio Codognato, who first took an interest in Duchamp’s work in the early 1970s.” — Peggy Guggenheim Collection

“As for distinguishing the real from the fake, the imitation from the copy, those are totally idiotic technical questions,” he said in 1967 in an interview. On another occasion, he argued: “A duplicate or a mechanical repetition has the same value as the original.”

Images courtesy Peggy Guggenheim Collection.