Marcel Duchamp's First Retrospective Since 1973 Opens at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting 'Marcel Duchamp,' the first retrospective of the French-American artist since 1973, running through August 22. Featuring around 300 works from Duchamp's six-decade career, the exhibition includes his famous readymades—urinals, bicycle wheels, snow shovels, hat racks—as well as a generous selection of his early oil-on-canvas paintings, notably 'Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2' (1912). Co-curated by MoMA's Ann Temkin and Michelle Kuo, along with Matthew Affron from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the show will travel to Philadelphia next. The Philadelphia Museum holds the world's largest collection of Duchamp works, largely due to a 1950 bequest by Walter Conrad Arensberg. The review reflects on the irony of Duchamp's deskilling concept in an age of AI and surveillance, noting that the readymades feel quaint in 2026 while the handmade paintings remain vibrant.