The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period. Duchamp challenged... conventional thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much by writing, but through subversive actions. He famously dubbed a urinal art and named it Fountain, though in a 1917 letter to his sister Duchamp indicates that a female friend, possibly the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, conceived of the urinal as sculpture and sent it to him under the pseudonym Richard Mutt. Duchamp produced relatively few artworks, while moving quickly through the avant-garde circles of his time. Marcel Duchamp was born in Blainville-Crevon Seine-Maritime in the Haute-Normandie region of France, and grew up in a family that enjoyed cultural activities.
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art has collections of more than 227,000 objects that include "world-class holdings of European and American paintings, prints, drawings and decorative arts" and is among the largest art museums in the United States. Its main building is located at the west end of Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, near the south end of Fairmount Park and is visited by more than 800,000 people annually. Other museum sites... include the Rodin Museum, also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Perelman Building, across the street from the Main Building, and several other historic sites. The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building opened in 2007 and houses some of the Museum's more popular collections, as well as over 200,000 books and periodicals and 1.6 million other documents. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park. Originally called the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, and housed in the Centennial Exposition's Memorial Hall, it opened its doors to the public on May 10, 1877.
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