Arguably the most important artist of the past century, Marcel Duchamp and his readymades changed art forever. By calling mundane objects such as bottle racks, typewriter dust covers, and hat racks art, the French genius destroyed the barricades separating art from everyday life. He also expanded notions of what an artwork could be while reorienting the way people understand its meaning and value.

"Focus: Marcel Duchamp," a new exhibit at Miami Art Museum, is anchored by Box-in-a-Suitcase, Duchamp's miniature retrospective of his own work. It's complemented by seven other edition pieces by the conceptual master, all borrowed from the collection of the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. The exhibit explores the question of Duchamp editions, arguing they weren't just a moneymaking venture for the artist later in life, when he had some of his famous readymades reproduced.

"It's clear that he approached the process of making replicas of his earlier works as an opportunity to expand upon, complicate, and even contradict (in a tongue-in-cheek way) some of the ideas that underpin the originals — redoubling his iconoclastic gestures vis-à-vis artistic authorship, aesthetic value, originality, authenticity, and so on," says Rene Morales, MAM's associate curator.
Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.; Tue., Dec. 13, 10 a.m. Starts: Nov. 19. Continues through March 18, 2011