About This Artwork

Joseph Cornell
American, 1903–1972

Untitled (Butterfly Habitat), c. 1940

Box construction with painted glass
12 x 9 1/8 x 3 1/8 in.
Signed and dated on back, lower center, on paper label: Joseph Cornell (typed) / Joseph Cornell (in artist’s hand) / ca. 1940 (typed)
Lindy and Edwin Bergman Joseph Cornell Collection, 1982.1845

Art © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Joseph Cornell’s box constructions are poetic distillations of memory and experience, which combine a modern sensibility for space, form, and surface with a delicate attention to the associative power of objects. In Untitled (Butterfly Habitat), ideas linked to flight, voyages, and the exotic are countered by the static, symmetrical organization of their display. The fragility and ephemeral beauty of the butterflies are seen through frosted compartment windows, which are reminiscent of Christmas decorations.

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Beverly Hills, California, Copley Galleries, Objects by Joseph Cornell, 1948, no. 11, as Series of Butterflies.

Pasadena, California, Pasadena Art Museum, An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell, 1966-67, no. 12 (ill.), as Untitled (Series of Butterfly Habitats).

Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), 1973-74, no cat.

New York, Castelli, Feigen, Corcoran, Joseph Cornell Portfolio, 1976, no. 7 (ill.).

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Joseph Cornell, 1980-82, traveled to London, Düsseldorf, Florence, Paris, and Chicago, exh. cat., no. 160 (ill.; New York and Chicago only).

Publication History

Dore Ashton, A Joseph Cornell Album, 1974, pp. 82-84 (ill.), as Butterfly Habitat.

Diane Waldman, Joseph Cornell 1977, pl. 5.

A.M. Hammacher, Phantoms of the Imagination: Fantasy in Art and Literature from Blake to Dali, New York, 1981, fig. 324 and p. 344, as Butterfly Habitat

Ownership History

Sold by the artist to William Copley, Beverly Hills, by 1948. Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Berman, Sherman Oaks, California, by 1966; sold to Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Feigen, New York, 1973; sold to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago, 1976; partially given to the Art Institute, 1982; remaining percentage given to the Art Institure, 2006.