Architectures of Display : Department Stores and Modern Retail

Through an international range of case studies from the 1870s to the present day, this volume analyses strategies of display in department stores and modern retail spaces. Established scholars and emerging researchers working within a range of disciplinary contexts and historiographical traditions shed light on what constitutes modern retail and the ways in which display, retail and interior designers, architects and artists have built and transformed their practice in response to the commercial context

Another history of museums: from the discourse to the museum-piece

The history of museums could get inspired on the procedures of material studies and of Anthropology in order to take a new stand and move away from the institutional approach and consider the approach of objects traditionally labelled as museum objects. The socalled “museum pieces” are supposed to have a number of characteristics, particularly some great historical and artistic qualities, sometimes an heritage quality, but above all the ability to make “friends” around the community or around the world. In all these respects, it is proposed here a number of research procedures that may supplement or enrich the directions usually assigned to the history of institutions