Up: [[Blue Box]] Created: 2024-07-13 Duchamp’s boxes were miniature art galleries, what he called portable museums, of small handmade replicas of his major works, along with ‘readymades’, which were everyday manufactured objects that became art simply because Duchamp had chosen to include them in the assemblage. Duchamp had the idea for the boxes in the early 1930s. He wanted them to form a catalogue of his major works but not be in a book. Sixty-nine of his large artistic work were replicated in small version by Duchamp between 1935 and 1940. The earliest boxes were cardboard inside a small leather suitcase. The boxes were covered in imitation leather, lined with coloured paper, and there were wooden tracks for panels that could be pulled out to make it appear as a miniature art gallery as in the photo. ![[Duchamp Box in a Suitcase.webp]] Duchamp made seven series of these boxes, 300 boxes in total. Many of them are referred to simply as boxes because only the earliest and the last series were in suitcases. In later years Duchamp oversaw the project but had the actual assemblage done by others, including the well-known assemblage artist, Joseph Cornell. > [!user] Other images of Duchamp's boxes are in > [The Story of a Box](https://www.thecommononline.org/the-story-of-a-box/)