The MoMA opened a sweeping retrospective titled “Marcel Duchamp” on Sunday, the first comprehensive U.S. survey of the French‑born provocateur in more than fifty years. By foregrounding early watercolors, family portraits and the seminal readymades “Bicycle Wheel” and “In Advance of the Broken Arm,” the show forces institutions and collectors to reassess the market weight of conceptual art and fuels auction buzz.

Curators Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo and Matthew Affron trace Duchamp’s evolution from conventional painting—evidenced by a 1910 Cézanne‑style portrait of his father—to the radical “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2),” which scandalized the 1913 Armory Show and vaulted the artist into fame. The exhibition’s chronological layout highlights how his flirtation with Cubism gave way to readymades that still command high auction premiums and drives significant price revisions.

While the iconic nine‑foot “Large Glass” remains at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, its absence does not diminish the retrospective’s impact on dealers who track provenance and exhibition history. By re‑contextualising Duchamp’s modest objects alongside his early canvases, the show reinforces his status as a market‑moving force whose concepts continue to shape today’s contemporary collecting.