Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Croatian folk culture has been and continues to be used as cultural legitimization for both a Croatian nation and the integration of that nation into empires. Using documentation of historical displays of Croatian folk art in Vienna and Zagreb, this research explores the early-20th century transition of these objects from Habsburg museums of applied art to newly founded ethnographic museums after World War I. With this change of location the purpose of these collections changed from promoting the economic products of cottage industry and a unified imperial identity to scientific classification for nationalist projects. However, in the underindustrialized Croatian lands, a Habsburg-influenced economic interest in folk art lingered late into the interwar period.