We usually glance at shop windows as we stroll through city streets, where ground-floor storefronts create a dialogue with passersby. But sometimes, it’s the windows that look back at us. These displays act as the “eyes” of a space, winking at pedestrians, catching their attention, and enticing them to pause, to step inside, and – in the best-case scenario – cross a threshold towards an unexpected place.

Art and design have long “occupied” these spaces, transforming them from two-dimensional spaces into multi-dimensional experiences. This shift has been happening – probably for centuries – ever since merchants began presenting goods in an “aesthetic” manner not for mere informative and commercial purposes.

The exhibition “Fresh Window: The Art of Display and Display of Art,” currently on view at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, is dedicated to this precise typological theme that unites art, display, communication, commerce, and culture. It also serves as a window into the early career of Jean Tinguely, whose career was connected to this “job” that often requires one to become art.

In 1941, as a teenager, Tinguely began an apprenticeship as a window dresser at the Globus department store in Basel, but he was ultimately not hired due to his “lack of discipline.” Instead, he completed his training in 1944 under freelance window designer Joos Hutter, who encouraged him to attend Basel’s school of applied arts. While honing his artistic “discipline,” he continued working on window displays throughout the city, taking on commissions for businesses such as Ramstein Iberg opticians, the Tanner bookstore, and the renowned Wohnbedarf furniture store. It was in these storefronts that he first developed the distinctive visual language that would define his later works.

These were also the years when Marcel Duchamp experimented with “art projects” – such as his Galerie Gradiva window display in Paris (1937) or his 1945 New York bookstore window, created for the launch of a book by André Breton.

By the 1950s, other young artists in New York were similarly applying their creativity to shop windows. Thanks to Gene Moore, the visionary art director of Bonwit Teller and Tiffany & Co., emerging young talents were supported and promoted, for example by commissioning projects to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol before they became celebrated names in the art world.

Starting with these historical examples, the exhibition expands to contemporary instances where storefronts shift from artistic objects to subjects of art. Alongside paintings, sculptural objects, and photographic research, shop windows also take center stage in video works, installations, and performances.

Given their visibility in prime locations, storefronts have particularly attracted performance artists with the goal of reaching a broad and diverse audience and using this “stage” to often address social and political issues.

For example, notable works include Christo’s Store Fronts (1964-68), where veiling the contents highlights the voyeuristic nature of display windows, adding an enigmatic, complementary dimension – even echoed in the exhibition catalog’s dust jacket.

In 1969, with his work Rotozaza III, Tinguely – this time as an official artist – “activated” in the Loeb department store window in Bern a machine smashing, bluntly critiquing the consumerism of the modern Western world.

A lesser-known performance by Marina Abramović, Role Exchange (1976), also resurfaces. In this piece, the artist swapped places with a prostitute in Amsterdam, who in turn took on Abramović’s role at an exhibition. For two hours, Abramović sat in the window of a house of pleasure, challenging perceptions of labor, identity, and the moral implications of window displays.

In 1980, Sherrie Rabinowitz and Kit Galloway used a pioneering technology that allowed pedestrians in New York to engage in real-time conversations with those passing by a storefront in Los Angeles, creating an early form of video calling. This project, Hole in Space, demonstrates how storefronts could transcend their traditional function, becoming spaces of connection, dialogue, and shared experience.

An intriguing recent work work is Martina Morger’s Lèche Vitrines (2020), which explores and pushes the seductive nature of shop windows to its extreme. By playing on the French idiom for “window-shopping,” the artist stages (dis)engaging yet performative experience by physically licking the most visually enticing storefronts.

These examples at the intersection of design and art highlight how shop windows function as conceptual mirrors of society, shaping both the cityscape and its inhabitants.

In addition, the exhibition not only transforms the museum’s stained-glass windows into display spaces but also extends into the streets of Basel. Seven newly created, fully functional storefront projects – developed by StadtKonzeptBasel in collaboration with former students of the Academy of Art and Design FHNW – feature original works and performances, further accompanying and integrating art into everyday urban life.

Opening image: Elmgreen & Dragset, Prada Marfa, 2012 © 2024/2025 ProLitteris, Zürich