Joseph Cornell was always fascinated with gift giving. For an artist born on Christmas Eve, these sentiments carried on throughout his life—even until now through the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. Many of his early pieces were made as gifts or games for his brother Robert, born seven years after Joseph, who suffered from cerebral palsy. 
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), Untitled, Soap Bubble Set/Pipe/Figurehead. Wood, glass, metal, paint and construction. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. © 2020 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society. (ARS), NY. Installation view, Joseph Cornell: Things Unseen, 2020, Phoenix Art Museum.
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), Untitled (Shaker Box with cylinders). Mixed media. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Gift of The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. © 2020 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The Phoenix Art Museum has recently opened an exhibition of “12 two-sided collages, two unlidded boxes filled with rolled paper and spools of thread, and one shadow box.” The work comes to the museum as a gift from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation in 2019. “Joseph Cornell: Things Unseen enables viewers to discover how Cornell used progressive art forms to explore surrealist concepts of memories, fantasies and dreams, all while examining themes of childhood, nature, sensuality, non-linear time and nostalgia for days gone by.”
In an article for an exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, curatorial assistant Laura Augustin wrote, “As an adult, Cornell looked back fondly on his holidays as a child, remembering them as magical times complete with festively decorating his Victorian home alongside his mother and siblings and a big roast beef dinner.”
Installation view, Joseph Cornell: Things Unseen, 2020, Phoenix Art Museum.
But it was more than the idea of gift giving that inspired Cornell. According to Augustin, through gift giving Cornell “hoped to form a spiritual connection with the recipient. Once the recipient was in possession of the object, they were invited into Cornell’s intimate world, encouraged to explore his associations, and to contemplate their meaning.”
Thankfully, due to Cornell’s success as an artist and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, this gift giving still exists today. And this time, it’s all of us who benefit from it. —
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