Last March, the IADS was interviewed by a French newspaper that wondered about the “recent incursion” of art into department stores. The journalist wanted to know whether this was a new way to lure customers or to offer them a novel type of luxury experience.

The question revealed a common misconception : the relationship between art and the department store did not begin with experiential retail, with Instagram, or with the contemporary art market’s global expansion. It began at the inception of the format itself, in the 1870s, for reasons that were at once commercial, cultural, and societal: the need to offer an extraordinary experience to customers in the nineteenth century, the ambition to position the department store at the forefront of the avant-garde, and, in some countries, the imperative to replace cultural institutions that did not yet exist. Department stores did not wait for art to become a global market before making it part of their business model. They were there from the start.

What follows is a detailed examination of this history — from the founding gestures of the 1870s to the art foundations and museum partnerships of today — drawing on documented sources across five continents. It is addressed to the leaders of the department store sector, in the conviction that understanding this heritage is not a matter of nostalgia but of strategic clarity.

IADS Exclusive: Art and department stores

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