Gagosian is pleased to announce The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Re-Created by Wes Anderson, an exhibition conceived by curator Jasper Sharp and the acclaimed American filmmaker. Opening December 16, 2025, it brings the artist’s New York studio to the heart of Paris, transforming the storefront gallery at 9 rue de Castiglione into a meticulously staged tableau—part time capsule, part life-size shadow box—for the first solo presentation of Cornell’s work in Paris in more than three decades.
Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) could not draw, paint, or sculpt, and received no formal art education, yet he produced one of the most original and extraordinary bodies of work of any artist in the twentieth century. Though he never left the United States, the city of Paris lived vividly in his imagination. He wandered its streets through postcards, guidebooks, and conversations with his friend Marcel Duchamp, and dedicated dozens of artworks to its poets, palaces, and historical protagonists. In the modest family home on Utopia Parkway in Queens, New York, that he shared with his mother and brother, he worked in a basement studio lined with shelves of whitewashed shoeboxes and tins filled with objects gathered during his forays through Manhattan bookstores, antique shops, and neighborhood dime stores. He referred to this collection of prints, feathers, maps, marbles, toys, seashells, and other ephemera as his “spare parts department.” It provided the raw materials for intricate collages, assemblages, and shadow boxes that would influence generations of artists—from Yayoi Kusama, Robert Rauschenberg, Betye Saar, Carolee Schneemann, and Andy Warhol to many working today.
