Since you have a "blank slate" space to work with, I'd think about how museums display their treasures.
Museums avoid the wall-o'-crap effect, with things piled helter-skelter or crammed too closely. Important items have enough visual "elbow room" that you can appreciate them. This photo from a recent estate sale illustrates the wall-o'-crap method of displaying things (no, I don't know that guy):
Every museum owns more things than they can display at one time. Objects are rotated in and out between storage and display. Different groups may be brought out for a special exhibit, and so on.
In my workshop, things are piled up in crazy-man style, where nobody can see the mess. In our house, we try to keep the living quarters reasonably normal. I rotate things from time to time, between crazy world and less-crazy world. That way, every nice item gets a turn sooner or later, and I don't get tired of staring at the same stuff forever.
If your space will combine workshop and display, perhaps you can make some visual separation between them. "And now, if we turn the corner, we enter the TV room."
If you have a lot of display-worthy tabletops, perhaps a wall with deep built-in shelves is as good a solution as any. The $64K question is, how much do you display in that space?
Just a thought . . . .
Phil Nelson