Wes Anderson turns Gagosian into Joseph Cornell’s studio, the master of box-assemblage

Years after conceiving in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna the exhibition project "The Spitzmaus Sarcophagus and Other Treasures," director Wes Anderson is back in the curator's shoes, this time assisting Jasper Sharp in the creation of an exhibition dedicated to American artist Joseph Cornell. 

“The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell’s Studio Reimagined by Wes Anderson”, on view at Gagosian Paris from December 16 to March 14, 2026, brings Cornell’s work back to the French capital after nearly four decades, ans it does so in a way that fully embraces the artist’s spirit: transforming the rue de Castiglione gallery into an experiential tableau — a life-sized assemblage that reactivates nearly 300 objects from his New York studio.

Born in 1903, Joseph Cornell is regarded as one of the foremost figures of assemblage sculpture — that post-surrealist artistic practice that gathers everyday, heterogeneous objects into compositions rooted in the expression of the unconscious. Although he never left his home in New York, where he cared for his mother and brother, Cornell spent years collecting hundreds of items during his wanderings through local shops and antique stores. These were later meticulously cataloged in shoeboxes and transformed into “reliquaries of memory and imagination” — his celebrated Shadow Boxes.

It is precisely this intimate and nostalgic universe — populated by maps, prints, feathers, marbles, and toys — that Anderson seeks to honor, turning the entire gallery space into a single, contemplative Box: a theater of imagination that speaks both his own visual language and Cornell’s poetic one

Within “The House on Utopia Parkway”, visitors will encounter some of Cornell’s most emblematic Shadow Boxes: from Pharmacy (1943) to Untitled (Pinturicchio Boy), part of his Medici series, framing several reproductions of Bernardino Pinturicchio’s Portrait of a Boy. Completing this archival scenography are additional loans from the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, including a selection of unfinished boxes.

Exhibition: The House on Utopia Parkway: Joseph Cornell's Studio Reimagined by Wes Anderson Curated by: Wes Anderson, Jasper Sharp Location: Gagosian, Paris, France Dates: From December 16, 2025 to March 14, 2026