Important for cultural institutions to raise money to run the museum or gallery

After visiting several museums and galleries recently, I could not help but notice the change in the retail landscape of the museum shops. Today, the museum shops take on a far more central position in museums and galleries, often situated right at the entrance rather than at the end of the route, seemingly giving what I describe as a movie trailer experience - providing a glance of the best bits of what is yet to come. As if this will help solidify someone’s desire to enter a museum or gallery. Could some of it actually have the opposite effect, deterring someone from entering the museum? Looking at each museum and gallery shop’s merchandise, the merchandise sold is becoming less about the exhibitions, less about the content of the museum, the gallery or even the people behind the exhibitions, but rather, highly designed to entice the impulsive shopper. In the spur of a moment when tens of dollars do not require much consideration from the average shopper, that museum or gallery merchandise on display looks very attractive to the museum or gallery visitor.

Partial shot of a Tadao Ando sketch sold at the ANDO Museum shop. Image by Von Chua.

The spatial footprint of museum shops seems to have grown in size in more recent years. From stocking memorabilia such as postcards and tote bags, to collectables such as limited edition prints and artisanal jewellery, and to educational items such as puzzles for children. Balancing the right museum or gallery shop’s size and merchandise selection is key in offering the best for visitors, and also serves as a rightful way for cultural institutions to raise money for the museum or gallery. In a large and significant museum in Madrid, the number of plain notebooks sold with various covers designed outnumbered the resources that could have been shared about the historically rich 20,000 artworks displayed within the museum. With a museum housing some of the best Spanish artists’ work, as well as other internationally known artworks by important artists throughout the world, the level and quality of merchandise being sold seem somewhat lacking. A bit of a shame.

In a tiny neighbourhood in Komaba, Meguro in Tokyo where the Japan Folk Crafts Museum is located, the museum shop occupies a small room tucked behind the ticketing office. Within this small room, one can find a wide range of past and the latest publications related to the folk art movement, original pieces related to the movement’s founder such as Sori Yanagi’s stainless steel kitchen tongs and kettle, and crafted pieces by unnamed artisans in ceramics, glass and fabrics that are directly related to the small museum’s founding ethos. A tiny but exemplary museum shop in my opinion. As customers are becoming more and more interested in understanding where things are manufactured and their local link, the future of the museum shop, I hope, is not more mass produced merchandise but a curated collection of merchandise that truly speaks to the ethos, principles or disciplines relevant to the exhibit. Much like the partial shot of the Tadao Ando sketch with Ando’s portrait stamp that is stuck in my mind, sold at the ANDO Museum in Naoshima, Japan that would appeal to the small museum’s visitors. On the other side of the world in London, UK, the London Transport Museum was also quoted in an article pointing towards a change in the selection of its manufacturers for merchandise, shifting manufacturing to the UK where possible.

Originally from New York but now seen in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Design Store in the Gyre building in Omotesando, Tokyo was the first opening of its shop outside the United States. The opening of the museum shop in 2022 meant that one is can purchase MoMA-curated items, regardless of someone who has visited the museum. On top of MoMA’s Museum Shop which is actually located within the MoMA in New York, one can now find the MoMA Design Stores in five additional locations, namely two in New York - one directly across the MoMA on 44 West 53rd Street and the second on Spring Street, one in Tokyo, one in Kyoto, and one in Hong Kong. In Tokyo, I appreciated that local Japanese-designed goods and equipment, plus a tiny selection of furniture including the hard-to-come-by Shiro Kuromata’s chair was available to buy off the shelf. As a typical design store, the location and the curation make sense; as a MoMA Design Store, is the MoMA acting as a curator and tastemaker in the cities they open in? What is the significance of the MoMA brand outside of its context, particularly as they are miles away from the origin of New York where they came from?

Within a museum or gallery, whether they are publicly or privately run, it has become important for cultural institutions to raise money to run the museum or gallery. To thrive, cultural institutions must run their organisations to the best of their ability, and steer away from merely selling nice-looking things or worse, subpar standard merchandise to visitors.