News

Museums increasing branding with upscale stores

March 15, 2012

The gift shop inside New York's Museum of Arts and Design feels more like a trendy place to shop than a museum store, thanks to Franci Sagar's creativity, according to a story in the NY Times.

Sagar has filled the store with soft music, bright lighting and one-of-a-kind objects and personal accessories to provide an array of textures, materials and colors. Books are kept to a minimum but can be bought online, and reproductions of artworks from the permanent collection, a must at most museum stores, are absent.

"We don't do reproductions here. That's not suitable for our mission," Sagar said in the story.

The museum collects and exhibits jewelry, so its store presents a triple-tiered display showcasing artist-made designs of wood, metal, beads, resin, horn and embroidery.

"Our whole mission is about living artists and process and materials, so the store completely fits with who we are as a museum," Holly Hotchner, the museum's director, told the NY Times.

Although the store is only 1,300 square feet, its gross annual sales hover around $3 million, making it one of the most economically successful museum stores in America per foot, Hotchner said.

Museums nationwide are trying to establish their brands, so stores are taking on a more sophisticated atmosphere, leaving catalogs and coffee mugs off the shelf, said Sagar, who also advises the Miami Art Museum, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Gardiner Museum in Toronto and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

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