Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire

This book considers the concrete ways in which the socio-political visions of liberalism translated into museum practice, as well as the manner in which museums reflected liberalism’s blind spots and critical weaknesses.

---

Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire is a study of museums of design and applied arts in Austria-Hungary from 1864 to 1914. The Museum for Art and Industry (now the Museum of Applied Arts) as well as its design school occupies a prominent place in the study.

The book also gives equal attention to museums of design and applied arts in cities elsewhere in the Empire, such as Budapest Prague, Cracow, Brno and Zagreb. The book is shaped by two broad concerns: the role of liberalism as a political, cultural and economic ideology motivating the museums’ foundation, and their engagement with the politics of imperial, national and regional identity of the late Habsburg Empire.

This book will be of interest for scholars of art history, museum studies, design history, and European history.