There’s a certain fatigue that sets in after you’ve been inside a museum for an hour.  It’s less physical than mental, and has to do with the stress of taking in a great deal all at once.  So smaller museums often offer a finer experience.  The collections are strongly focused and you’re not exhausted by the time you’re through.  The Design Museum in Gent strikes me this way. The museum has a smart collection of objects by well-known designers like Victor Horta and Christopher Dresser, as well as lesser-known ones, like Gustave Serrurier-Boy and Borek Sipak.

What’s best is how informal the displays are, and how many of the objects have been left unrestored, in their real, battered condition.  Less than a design museum, it seems, at times, like a museum of old everyday things.  I’m accustomed to seeing the Wassily chair in shining leather and chrome, in stores, in corporate waiting rooms, and in apartments.  But to see a vintage one, with cracked leather and spotted chrome, sitting right on the floor, along with other contemporary pieces, all similarly worn, is refreshing.  It reminds you how old (nearly a hundred years) so much canonical modern furniture is, and that it was intended to be used, not stuck on a pedestal at MoMa.