Gagosian collaborates with Wes Anderson on Joseph Cornell exhibition in Paris

Gagosian collaborated with relocation director Wes Anderson to recreate the New York studio of American artist Joseph Cornell in the grand gallery’s Paris space at 9 rue Castiglione. It will be part of an exhibition curated by Jasper Sharp, titled “The House of Utopia Parkway,” scheduled to run from December 16 to March 14, 2026.

Gagosian said in a statement that the gallery will be transformed into “a carefully staged scene, part time capsule, part life-size shadow box, for the first time in more than four decades that Cornell’s work will be shown alone in Paris.” “Joseph Cornell, born in Nyack, New York, in 1903, could not paint or sculpt and had no formal art education, yet he produced one of the most original and extraordinary works of any twentieth-century artist.”

Anderson’s works include royal tenenbaum family (2001), grand budapest hotel (2014), and Life Aquatic by Steve Zissou (2004), drawing inspiration from Cornell University. Take the latter symmetry palace (1943), for example; its composition and symmetry reflect many of Anderson’s iconic balanced scenes.

The exhibition will feature several examples of the late artist’s glass-fronted “shadow boxes,” which Gagosian described as “poetic relics of memory and imagination.” they include pharmacy (1943), based on an apothecary cabinet once owned by Teeny Duchamp and Marcel Duchamp; Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy) (c. 1950) From his “Medici” series depicting several copies of Bernardino Pinturicchio portrait of a boy (approximately 1500) behind amber glass; and Jill’s dressing room (1939), a tribute to the work of Jean-Antoine Watteau Giles (1721) From the collection of the Louvre.

Cornell’s work can be found in major museums such as the Center Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, the National Center for the Arts Reina Sofia, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Before he was an artist, he was a collector who spent hours scouring New York’s stories for objects that sparked an emotional connection. He collected objects such as 19th-century French novels, clay pipes, and ticket stubs, which formed the basis of his art. They are given new life in his collages, artworks and boxed structures. As the Smithsonian American Art Museum writes on its website, “Although Cornell never considered himself a Surrealist, he found inspiration in the collages of Max Ernst and the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp. He worked extensively in the 1930s and 1940s Exhibiting with them and maintaining friendships with these artists, Connell’s experimentation was encouraged by their confident embrace of an art form that did not require painting or sculpture, and his work from this period can be considered both Surrealist and Victorian in his arts and crafts interests.”