**The National Museum Zurich – shown here on a postcard – was held up in the United States as a model of how a museum should look.** Swiss National Museum

How Swiss period rooms influenced American museums

After it opened in 1898, the Swiss National Museum in Zurich and its period rooms served as an important model for museums in the United States.

Barbara Basting

Barbara Basting worked as a cultural editor and currently heads the visual arts division in the City of Zurich’s Culture Department.

Strolling through the almost endless galleries and rooms in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston, one can’t help but be overwhelmed by the abundance of art and the exquisite craftsmanship on display, with works ranging from Antiquity to the present day. The sizeable collection of European art reminds us of the pioneering role played by the New England states in the occupation of North America by European settlers. Besides artworks from their former homelands, they also imported European museum concepts and adapted them to their own needs. When walking round the museum in Boston, one would hardly suspect that the Swiss National Museum was one of the main museums on which the institution was modelled, as today they are very different. The National Museum Zurich has retained and developed its original concept as a history museum with a national focus. Meanwhile, the MFA has evolved to become an international art and design museum.

This photo looks like the National Museum Zurich but is in fact the Bremgarten Room at the MFA in Boston, photographed circa 1910. — **This photo looks like the National Museum Zurich but is in fact the *Bremgarten Room* at the MFA in Boston, photographed circa 1910.** Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

What connects the two museums in Boston and Zurich are the period rooms. While they now play a less important role at the MFA in Boston, they are still a core part of the collection in Zurich and one of the museum’s main attractions. These period rooms proved very popular in American museums over the course of the 20th century. By importing the model, the museum in Boston – and shortly afterwards the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which was also established in 1870 – played a pioneering role, as art historian Kathleen Curran has shown. Around the turn of the 20th century, the directors in Boston were looking to have a new building erected to house their steadily growing collections. They sent a committee to Europe on a fact-finding trip to seek out suitable models for the architecture and the future presentation of the collections. The committee’s trip resulted in an extensive report, offering a snapshot of the European museum landscape, which was in turmoil at the time. The museum experts from the still relatively young country were particularly interested in the national museums that had come into vogue in Europe in the 19th century. The National Museum Zurich, founded in 1898, was held up as a particularly successful example.

**A view of the courtyard of the National Museum Zurich, circa 1898.** Swiss National Museum

The national museum trend emerged after the Napoleonic Wars, based on the ideas of late Romanticism in Germany, and subsequently accompanied the rise of the nation state. National museums broke with the previously predominant type of museum, that of the art museum, which often had origins in royal collections and Kunstkammer (cabinets of art and curiosities). The purpose of a national museum was to present and preserve national cultural heritage. It therefore brought together objects that supported a definition of the nation as a culturally homogeneous space. Indirectly, this also meant deciding who and what did or didn’t belong to this concept of nationhood. The Musée de Cluny in Paris, which was founded in 1832 by a private citizen and soon bought by the state, was one of the early models, with its focus on French medieval and Renaissance art and artefacts. This elevated the status of architecture and craftsmanship. In fact, the museum was a presentation of random furniture and objects from the 16th century. It was a huge success with the public but a somewhat questionable construct from a historian’s perspective.

**The Musée de Cluny, photographed circa 1890.** Wikimedia

Initially, this type of museum did not appeal at all to the English-leaning Bostonians when they founded their museum in 1870, partly due to a lack of suitable holdings. Instead, they were inspired by a museum of a completely different kind: the then also highly-acclaimed South Kensington Museum in London (now the V&A). It represented the subsequently much-copied type of a decorative arts museum tied to an educational institution, with a mission to educate and inform. During the golden age of the Industrial Revolution, there was a desire to provide guidance in terms of taste and offer creative impetus by bringing together all manner of exceptional objects. Whole rooms were filled with display cabinets in which objects such as vases or glasses could be viewed side by side. The origin and history of the objects became secondary. This dry model of exhibiting collections in an educational way initially proved very popular. But visitor numbers soon plummeted, as these museums failed to tell engaging stories.

A new view of history to attract more visitors

It’s not surprising that by the late 19th century the more visitor-friendly period room model of the Musée de Cluny had caught on in Europe, and also attracted the interest of the Bostonians. The new Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, but also various other museums in Germany – such as the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich – as well as the Swiss National Museum in Zurich took this approach. It relied on the academic concept of ‘cultural history’ and also emerged primarily in the German-speaking countries. History was no longer told as a sequence of dynasties and wars; instead, the focus was on aspects of social and cultural history, from religion and science to art and the history of law. It was intended to convey a comprehensive and more authentic view of history. This new historiographical approach was made popular by books such as The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy published in 1860 by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt.

**Portrait of historian and author Jacob Burckhardt, circa 1840.** Wikimedia

This new development was also helped by the fact that art history – which emerged as an academic discipline at the time – also took a cultural history approach. Its exponents, such as Heinrich Wölfflin and Johan Huizinga, no longer considered artworks in isolation, instead incorporating the cultural context in which they originated. Innovative museum directors presented artworks in period-specific settings, featuring relevant architectural features, textiles, furnishings and domestic appliances from the era in question. The formula developed at the National Museum Zurich went down well with the Boston museum directors, and subsequently a number of their colleagues. It was based on the engaging juxtaposition of different presentation forms, in particular of object display cases and period rooms. The Zurich Museum Commission – whose members included the subsequent founding director, Heinrich Angst, art historian Johann Rudolf Rahn, and Zurich mayor Hans Pestalozzi – worked with conservators and architect Gustav Gull to develop the building from the inside out as it were, on the basis of existing collections. This gave rise to a building that is an amalgamation of differing parts with an ‘armoury’ as its centrepiece.

Sketch of the National Museum Zurich by Gustav Gull. The armoury – now the Ruhmeshalle (hall of fame) – is easily recognisable. Image dating back to 1892. — **Sketch of the National Museum Zurich by Gustav Gull. The armoury – now the *Ruhmeshalle* (hall of fame) – is easily recognisable. Image dating back to 1892.** Swiss National Museum

The Bostonians were particularly taken with the architecturally integrated period rooms, such as the state rooms from the Seidenhof Hotel in Zurich. The rooms allowed visitors to embark on an immersive journey through time in chronological order. It was also stressed that in Zurich the period rooms were not theatrically embellished or arbitrarily thrown together, but that they were as original and authentic as possible, despite being adapted for the museum setting. As a result, the directors in Boston also had a wing constructed in their new building to house period rooms based on the Zurich model. They even included an example from Switzerland: the 16th-century Bremgarten Room. However, this was resold in 1930. The Metropolitan Museum in New York acquired the Flims Room, also known as the Swiss Room, in 1906. It can still be admired there today. The convoluted history of this Swiss Room, as reconstructed by Paul Fravi in 1982, is a perfect example of how the appreciation of artistic and decorative art production changes over time. The panelled state room with its magnificent tiled stove was built around 1684 for the ‘little castle’ belonging to the Capol family in Flims. Today it is considered an outstanding example of its type. Yet, Rudolf Rahn, the very art historian responsible for founding the National Museum, described the décor of the castle in 1873 as ‘charming’ but not artistically exceptional.

The Swiss Room in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. — **The *Swiss Room* in the *Metropolitan Museum* in New York.** Metropolitan Museum, New York

In any case, the wood panelling from Flims and several tiled stoves were sold to Germany in 1883, i.e. well before the National Museum was founded. In 1884, they ended up at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, the predecessor to the Bode Museum. They were then sold to New York in 1906, presumably because they didn’t fit with the rest of the collection. When the town of Flims contacted the Metropolitan Museum to enquire about the possibility of buying them back, the request was denied. Officials in Flims were told that the museum holdings were not for sale but that they could have a replica made if necessary. Needless to say, the price of a replica would have exceeded the proceeds from the sale in 1883 many times over. The enthusiasm for such period rooms from Europe in a country that was still trying to find its own place in history took on a life of its own, particularly in the first half of the 20th century. For example, a series of cloisters were acquired from Europe by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, while wealthy Bostonian heiress Isabella Stewart Gardner opened a replica Venetian palazzo in her home city in 1903, replete with furniture, art and sculptures of different origins. Even the completely fantastical and crazy Hearst Castle (built from 1920) in California is rooted in this tradition.

The crazy story of the origins of Hearst Castle. YouTube

But it wasn’t long before many American museum directors – including the Bostonians – started to focus on period rooms from America, which was still a relatively new country. With their help, and later through ‘American wings’ focused on the presentation of American art and design, the idea of a national museum, which had been imported from Europe, was adapted to US needs. By the 1970s, many of the period rooms imported from Europe had been altered, mothballed or sold on, prompted by societal shifts and a changing notion of history. There was some scepticism about what sort of society the primarily stately period rooms were supposed to represent, with artists such as Ed Kienholz particularly searing in their criticism. For his installation Roxys from 1960/61, Kienholz recreated a room from a 1940s Las Vegas brothel. Ironically, for now it hasn’t ended up in an American collection, but in a European one: at the Fondation Pinault in Venice.

Edward Kienholz’s Roxys is the reconstruction of a brothel from 1940s Las Vegas. — **Edward Kienholz’s *Roxys* is the reconstruction of a brothel from 1940s Las Vegas.** Pinault Collection

The collection

National Museum Zurich

The exhibition showcases more than 7,000 exhibits from the Museum’s own collection, highlighting Swiss artistry and craftsmanship over a period of about 1,000 years. The exhibition spaces themselves are important witnesses to contemporary history, and tie in with the objects displayed to create a historically dense atmosphere that allows visitors to immerse themselves deeply in the past.

More of: Modern Age Education World of museums

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