BOGEN Munich 1912 . A Museum of Technology Writes Art History

The Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik (German Museum of Masterworks in the Natural Sciences and Technology) in Munich was established in 1906. lts very name is indicative: unlike museums of industry, an older type, the new institution sought not only to foster the public's interest in technology and the sciences, but also to spur the creation of new masterworks. The museum thus repatriated a concept the aesthetics of genius had reserved for the flne arts to the realm of 1 General view of the mechanics ensemble, Munich, Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik, exhibition room at the former National technology and craftsmanship.1 Instruments and Museum on Maximilianstraße, 1907 machines were set up like sculptures in the exhibition halls and associated with the names of individual inventors. Charts and annotations explained related topics in technology. If we assume that Marcel Duchamp visited this museum in the summer of 1912, then t.he specific manner in which the museum displayed machinery and technological inventions must have had far-reaching consequences for twentieth-century art history. 2 A hundred years have passed, however, and so the retrospective reconstruction of this encounter cannot be more than an intellectual experiment; the following remarks will conduct this experiment with a view to its systematic implications. The aim is to bring out the intersections, but importantly also the divergences between a presentation of the history of technology that celebrates scientiflc progress, and the ideas and interests behind Duchamp's art, whose fundamental thrust was ultimately a very different one.3 In the summer of 1912, the museum of science and technology was still housed in its flrst temporary exhibition rooms at the former Bavarian National Museum on Maximilianstraße. A photograph from the mechanics hall illustrates the imposing exhibition architecture (flg. 1). Smaller instruments and devices were presented in glass cases. The ensemble in front and to the left, for instance, is devoted to ''the laws of central force motion and their application." Set up in front of the case is a mechanical centrifuge from 17 42. Otto von Guericke's Magdeburg hemispheres are on display as a sort of relic of science in the glass case on the right. The museum's initial collection consisted of ca. 7,000 objects that were grouped into forty-five subject areas. During the foundation phase, ''wish lists'' were compiled for the individual subject areas in order to close gaps in series of historical development the con-