Speaking of Fresh Widows

Marcel Duchamp was in the throes of completing and framing his Large Glass when he made Fresh Widow in 1920, a French window-shaped sculpture that evoked, it was said, the widows of World War I. Marcel Duchamp, Fresh Widow, 1920, Schwarz Edition, 1964, as offered at some point by Levy Gorvy By the time Duchamp agreed to Arturo Schwarz’s proposal to fabricate Fresh Widow and other early works in editions in the summer of 1964, Col. D. Harold Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository, had already removed the sixth floor window from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. The convoluted authenticity and ownership disputes over the window displayed for many years as The Window or The Sniper’s Perch are described briefly in the Heritage Auctions listing for the window. The auction includes all the documentation, court transcripts, and original museum plaques, that establish “conclusively and without ambiguity the identity, provenance, and legal ownership of this historic artifact.” 18…