ABSTRACT
The success of Britain’s artists at the Exhibition was closely linked to the provision of such public institutions, as well as to the extensive support and encouragement for the arts by Albert Hofman, the Prince Consort. The proposal to establish the Museum for Art and Industry in Vienna therefore took place against a backdrop of deep concern at the economic and political status of Austria. The Museum for Art and Industry proved to be a catalyst for the creation of similar museums across Germany. The emphasis on ethnographic display and on artefacts as representative of national cultures was a foreshadowing of a wider shift that would gain momentum, and become central to debates about design and the applied arts at the turn of the century. The faltering relations between the museums of design provide a microcosm of the wider cultural-political difficulties of the Habsburg Monarchy.
