San Francisco MoMA // United States

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination > If you’re the kind of person who only sees things in boxes, you might not appreciate the art of Joseph Cornell—almost of all of which, remarkably, was created in boxes. A self-taught artist who lived on the unironic Utopia Parkway in Queens, NY, Cornell relied almost exclusively on found materials: the detritus of books, newspapers, and second-hand stores—even the dirt on his studio floor—to create intricate collages that magically turn the simple box into a window through which we can reimagine the world. Bringing together nearly 200 works dating from the 1930s until the artist’s death in 1972, Navigating the Imagination is the first comprehensive retrospective of Cornell’s work in 25 years. —Craig Bromberg

10/06/07 - 01/06/08

Joseph Cornell, “Untitled (Cockatoo with Watch Faces),” ca. 1949; box construction with inoperable music box; The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection; © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

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