Thaddaeus Ropac: fried snowballs between Duchamp and Sturtevant A report on the Milan exhibition

Milan, March 17 (askanews) - From March 17 to July 23, 2026, Thaddaeus Ropac at Palazzo Belgioioso in Milan presents the artistic and intellectual dialogue between Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), the father of Conceptual Art, and Sturtevant (1924–2014), whose innovative practice questioned the conceptual framework of art in a post-Duchampian world. Taking its title from Sturtevant's ironic observation, "Dialogues Are Mostly Fried Snowballs" reflects Duchamp's penchant for witty quips. Elena Bonanno di Linguaglossa, managing director of the Milan branch of the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, spoke to askanews about this third dialogue. After Georg Baselitz and Lucio Fontana and Valie Export and Ketty La Rocca, "we are at Thaddaeus Ropac in Milan, we decided to create this pas de deux between Marcel Duchamp and Elaine Sturtevant. We represent the Sturtevant Foundation, the archive. This idea comes from Thaddaeus and the exhibition is based on this concept of repetition, not appropriation: a play between repetition, differences, interpretation of the same object. We have therefore combined works by Marcel Duchamp that come from a very important private European collection, including one of Marcel Duchamp's key works, the suspended Bottle Rack, and works by Elaine Sturtevant who has always worked on memory, therefore taking up the great artists, in this case Duchamp. We asked for a series of loans to create this dialogue between two giants".

At the centre of the main room is the extraordinary work by Duchamp entitled De ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy, La Bo te-en- valise (1966): the "portable museum" curated by the artist himself. The self-celebratory work, "Teeny," which belonged to Duchamp's wife, contains three miniature replicas as well as 77 reproductions of his works, including many from Dialogues Are Mostly Fried Snowballs and a 1936 photograph of Man Ray's Porte-bouteilles, also on display.