ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, museums developed in close symbiosis with the discipline of art history. The necessity of categorizing objects and ordering them into narratives was inherent to both; hence, museological practices informed historical and theoretical studies, and vice versa. Designs that could serve as specimens in inquiry into the history of ornament were first collected in museums of design for practical reasons. Museums of design posed a challenge to the biographical methodology that was prevalent when it came to painting or sculpture. The exhibitions held at design museums were highly varied, but there was a general trend, for the focus gradually moved away from supporting contemporary industry, towards scholarly considerations and educating the wider public. Temporary exhibitions that included loaned objects only emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Building on the results of the Goldsmithing Exhibition, Jozsef Hampel drew up connections between the ‘high’ applied arts and the work of ‘the people’ in Hungary.
