As part of the 50th anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, the exhibition Art on Display explores the display solutions found for the opening of the Museum in 1969 and focuses more generally on the design of museums and exhibitions at that time.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition opens with a curatorial note explaining the aims and characteristics of the exhibition, taking into account that it is held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam at different times.

In addition, the catalogue reflects the dual objective of exploring both exhibition design at the Gulbenkian Museum and other significant examples of post-war international museography, as the essays written by each curator of the exhibition reveal: Penelope Curtis analyses the relationship between the Museum and exhibition design in other countries, especially the designs developed by Franco Albini, while Dirk van den Heuvel explores the exhibition as an urban space in the work of Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson and Lina Bo Bardi. The five case studies following these two texts provide greater detail about the projects that the exhibition aims to recreate: Palazzi Bianco and Rosso by Franco Albini, Museo Correr by Carlo Scarpa, First and Second International Exhibition of Experimental Art and Fifth International Sculpture Exhibition by Aldo van Eyck, Painting & Sculpture of a Decade 54–64 by Alison and Peter Smithson and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo by Lina Bo Bardi.

Both the essays and the case studies are amply illustrated with drawings and archive photographs of the exhibitions cited, as well as with views of the exhibition at the Gulbenkian Museum.