Museum pieces and piece goods

At the end of the 19th century, the department store and the museum were, in many respects, comparable institutions and mutually influenced one another. Museums played a key role in forming an aesthetic relationship to things and thus in developing a commodity culture. In both places, it was about exhibiting, extolling and conveying things using stories and atmospheres; here, as there, about comparing and appraising, appropriating and convincing, and about a perceived sense of being in the know and up-to-date. After reviewing their history, we would like to discuss the relationship today between these two key institutions of modernity on the basis of specific examples of contemporary museums and department stores. Are traditional characterisations of museum objects and commercially traded things still valid? What trends do the presentation of objects and goods follow? How traditional or innovative are their architectures, having always combined both functional as well as artistic elements? The ways of speaking and acting in early museums as well as department stores were largely standardized: what is the social practice of culture and commodity consumption like today?