An American artist best known for his small collage boxes as well as for his experimental films, Joseph Cornell was called "one of the finest American artists of the [twentieth] century" by Charles Simic in the Times Literary Supplement. "During the 1930s," wrote an essayist in Contemporary Artists, "Cornell began arranging found objects in glass and wooden boxes, creating three-dimensional collage constructions which are the immediate forerunners of Assemblage, an art form highly popularized in America during the 1950s and 1960s. Over a span of about 40 years, Cornell fashioned a magical miniature world by arranging the trivia and memorabilia he retrieved from antique and secondhand shops, on beaches and in backyards."

Cornell was born on December 24, 1903, in Nyack, New York. His forbears were members of wealthy Dutch immigrant families, and he counted among relatives the wealthy and well-known Commodore William Voorhis, his maternal grandfather. After her husband's death...