Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns and Tinguely all started out as window dressers

Christmas, and in every city already crowds congregate around the festive department store displays in defiance of the apparent disappearance of the ‘high street’. For despite digital merchandising and online delivery, adults as much as children delight in this annual extravaganza, and such windows prove more popular than ever precisely because they cannot be enjoyed other than physically, in person. For many, these windows remain an indelible early metropolitan memory and perhaps the first experience of a work of visual art, something specifically conjured to arrest the attention, intrigue and entertain.

And now just in time for holiday season comes Fresh Window, the first major museum exhibition on this tradition, an exploration of ‘The Art of Display & Display of Art’. The show, which I have co-curated, presents a wide variety of artists who have used such windows in myriad ways but also elucidates how, in entirely practical terms, so many started their careers and literally survived by creating these commercial tableaux.