A chair enters the museum

The Museum of Applied Arts was founded in 1873, and its monumental building opened on Husova Street in 1883. Its existence challenged an old cultural hierarchy. Paintings and sculpture were already accepted as art; furniture, glass, textiles, tools and manufactured objects had to argue that usefulness did not cancel imagination. Stand before the ornate facade and choose one ordinary object you used today. What would a curator need to claim before placing it behind glass: beauty, innovation, social meaning, rarity or authorship? The museum expands the canon, but it also acquires the power to separate exemplary design from everything left outside. A collection can liberate a category and police it at the same time.