The Miami Art Museum will be highlighting works from its permanent collection, including a hard-won edition of Marcel Duchamp’s Box in a Suitcase (Boite-en-valise), in its main gallery until it relocates to its new facilities in 2013. By doing so, the museum frees up institutional resources to prepare for the move while reinforcing its reputation as a premier artistic center for Florida and beyond.

The otherwise low-profile inclusion of the Duchamp suitcase — itself a portable museum of his major works — in the “Between Here and There” installation is especially evocative. The suitcase, of course, evolved as storage on the go for people of no permanent address: tourists, merchants, nomads, refugees. All the comforts and souvenirs of home, folded and boxed. As commentators have noted, every museum-goer is engaged in the construction of such a portable museum of memory. The question is what happens to these personal collections when we’re gone.

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