MoMA Plans a Retrospective for Marcel Duchamp, the Dada Artist Who Was Unimpressed With His Own Masterpieces

The French-American avant garde artist said painting and sculpture exhibitions made him sick. But the collection of 200 of his works may tell the story of art in the 20th century

Amy Crawford | Contributing Writer

April/May 2026

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The French American artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made a splash when his Fountain, an impishly repurposed porcelain urinal, was rejected by a major New York art show in 1917. But while he became a household name through his conception of “readymade” sculpture, Duchamp spent his six-decade career experimenting with nearly every available medium and subject. In April, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will mount the artist’s first U.S. retrospective in more than half a century.

The exhibition includes more than 200 works—including a 1968 replica of Fountain—that, together, tell the story of art in the 20th century. Duchamp, who once confessed to a friend, “All painting and sculpture exhibitions make me sick,” might have laughed at such a claim. Yet his place in art history, he saw, was not up to him: “A painting is made not by the artist but by those who look at it. ... In other words, no painter knows himself or what he is doing.”

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Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist writing about cities, science, the environment, art and education. A longtime Smithsonian contributor, her work also appears in CityLab and the Boston Globe.