L.A. Louver’s connection to Marcel Duchamp began at the gallery’s inception. While teaching at UCLA in the early 1970s, Founding Director Peter Goulds was so inspired by Duchamp’s Fresh Widow (1920)—a pun-infused sculpture of a window with leather panes—that he created an artwork in its image. Goulds substituted the leather with mirrored panes, creating a louvered window in the manner of his university apartment. Whereas Duchamp’s sculpture was inscribed with "Fresh Widow, 1920, Rose Sélavy," Goulds’ work read "La Louver, 1976, Eros it is the mirror." This adaptation of Duchamp’s title became the gallery’s namesake and guiding light. Over the past 50 years, Marcel Duchamp’s works have been featured in various exhibitions at L.A. Louver, most notably in A Marcel Duchamp Collection (2016), which showcased an expansive archival collection amassed by Duchamp scholar Francis M. Naumann over the course of 40 years that was subsequently acquired by M+, Hong Kong. 

L.A. Louver Celebrates 50 Years presents three works by Duchamp: a 1934 print of the artist's La Mariée (The Bride), a stamped pochoir colored collotype of the iconic Nude Descending a Staircase (1937), and an etching of The Chess Players (1966). Also displayed is an archival vitrine of select materials from The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) (1934) (edition 300) - consisting of 94 photos, drawings, studies & manuscript in total - and a portrait of Marcel Duchamp by Irving Penn. The inclusion of these artworks and expanded materials pay homage to the spirit of multidisciplinary creativity that has led the gallery over the last 50 years.