When the Schnütgen-Museum in Cologne opened as an autonomous institution in 1932, it was the first collection of medieval artefacts presented in a quasi-‘white cube’ display. Witte’s radically modern mise-en-scène has received little attention by architectural historians despite the growing scholarly interest in the rise of the modernist museum design in Germany and the museumification of medieval heritage. The Schnütgen’s early participation in these dramatic changes reveals how curators and art critics viewed the role of modern architecture and museum curation in representing the relevance of the religious art of the Middle Ages for modern society and culture.