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Cards with Faberge egg images are available
at The Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts in Richmond, Va. An expansion at
the museum will mean significantly more
space for the gift store.
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rt museum managers are always looking for new stationery
products to introduce to their customers.
While traditional standbys seem
to work the best, there are items
that can make new impressions on
art gallery visitors.
The Akron Art Museum in Akron,
Ohio, for example, is doing well with an
innovative take on stationery: a sculpture
in paper.
“It’s really something different,” said
Museum Store Manager and Buyer
Laura Firestone. “It’s a sculpture in
paper of our building created by Darby
Scott, an artist from northeastern Ohio.
So there’s a regional tie-in, and that’s also
really cool. It’s unique. It’s definitely
something that you are not going to pick
up anywhere.”
Firestone suggested that other museums
try to do similar projects, particularly if they can tie it
into a special event.
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Classic paintings on note cards are for
sale at The Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts. The gift store works with curators to
secure images for merchandise.
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“She made a few hundred for our opening (in July
2007),” Firestone said of the sculptures, which retail for
$24.95. “They sell well, and they are also a collectible. They
are handmade and [there are] not too
many of them floating around out
there.”
The Toledo Museum of Art in
Toledo, Ohio, is always adding new stationery
products to its massive gift shop.
“We focus on everything related to
our collection at the museum, but we
also have fun with it,” said Retail
Manager Heather Blankenship.
One of those “fun” items is “The Art
of Paper Cutting” book that the museum
recently debuted for $15.95.
“We produced this activity book that
is the art of paper cutting,” Blankenship
explained. “It’s an ancient art form, and
the book features all museum-related
images, like the mummy or something
from our Asian collection. It’s something both children and adults can enjoy, and it has been doing
very well.”
The activity book is a product development
venture between the museum
and local artists.
“It has been an extreme success,”
Blankenship said. “It starts off with children
doing it as a hands-on activity, and
then the adults get into it. You can create
intricate lace-like designs. The books are
often given as gifts for other people, too.”
Similarly, the Toledo Museum of Art
also offers tatebanko paper dioramas.
“Paper animation kits and Japanese
art forms are really big right now,”
Blankenship said.
The Toledo Museum of Art
also recently debuted a new masterworks
book featuring art from
the museum in a special, signed
edition for $60 and a regular version
for $39.95.
“It highlights our collection,”
Blankenship said. ‘And it’s a beautiful,
full-color, glossy book that’s
more than 400 pages. It was put
together by our curators and our
publications department. We’re
mostly known for original work by
local artists, and this book really
shows that off.”
The Contemporary Art
Museum St. Louis recently added
some new stationery lines, including
Fresh Frances, a Chicago stationery
line, and Polite Cards from the United Kingdom.
“Fresh Frances is based on a lot of old icon and clip art
kind of stuff and is really very silly
and fun, and some are art related,”
said Visitor Services and
Retail Operations Manager
Kiersten Torrez. “And the Polite
Cards have a lot of great artists
working for them, including
David Shrigley and Stella Vine,
who are both very influential
working artists.”
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The light, airy and inviting entrance to The Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts shop. All new postcards, posters
and note cards will be part of the gift store’s expansion.
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Torrez, who noted that her
museum gift shop has been affected
“a little bit” by the economy,
said she is making purchases that
are more conscientious for the upcoming
summer season.
“I am starting to shop right now, and
we are looking at some new items from
Poketo,” she said. “They started with wallets
and now have some more interesting
things that I like, too, including a cute
notebook and folder set that I think I am
going to stock.”
Finding new stationery products is
certainly on the mind of Gift Shop
Manager Barbara Lenhardt, whose shop
at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in
Richmond, Va., will expand from its temporary
1,000-square-foot location to a
3,500-square-foot permanent location
sometime in the next 14 months.
“We are undergoing a huge
165,000-square-foot expansion at
the museum that has been going
on for about three-and-a-half
years,” Lenhardt said. “Because of
that, business hasn’t been booming,
but it is giving us time to plan
and figure out what we’re going to
carry.”
The museum’s stationery plan
is being devised by its curators in
the various departments.
“We are culling through that
and coming up with the best new
images to introduce when we
expand,” Lenhardt said. “When
we figure that out, we will introduce
all new postcards posters,
note cards and more.”
One of the biggest introductions in the expansion will be
the gift shop’s addition of the Art Prints On Demand program,
a computerized catalog that
can store hundreds of images.
“It replaces the old-style flip
racks for posters,” Lenhardt
explained. “So if you used to be
able to have 25 or 50 posters on
that display, now we can do 100
or more. We will still keep some
of the best-selling posters in stock,
but others will be in the Art On
Demand system, and customers
can select the poster they like,
have it matted or framed and then
shipped directly to their home.
More and more museums are
switching to the Art on Demand
system because it gives the customers
more options and it also
takes up less footprint in your
store.”
Other plans include a new souvenir
book that will include some
of the museum’s most popular
pieces with a map and information
about the facility that will be
priced in the $10 range.
Joel Monson, gift shop manager
for the National Museum of
Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyo., is currently looking to
expand his stationery selection.
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Shoppers browse at The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
store. An affordable souvenir book that includes images
of some of the attraction’s most popular works is on the
horizon for the shop.
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“We are currently adding note cards to our collection,”
Monson said. “A lot of this is on request for certain pieces of
art that people wanted in a note card to send away, particularly
for our pieces by Robert Bateman and Robert Kuhn.”
Many museum gift shops try to capitalize as much as possible
on special exhibits.
“We tend to stock things that
go along with our current exhibitions,”
Firestone said. “We switch
things up every three months or
so, so we always seem to have
something new, and there are usually
a lot of paper products available.”
When buying products for special
exhibits, there are different
ways to approach purchases.
“Right now, we have prints,
posters, postcards and note cards
for our ‘Edwin Weston Life Work’
exhibit, which is black and white
photography, and we were able to find most of the merchandise
that was already out there,” Firestone said. “We go
searching. We do a lot of research and contact other museums
or contact whoever curated it. We have to find out
licensing restrictions. But the nice thing about floating
exhibits is that there usually is a good amount of product out
there.”
Firestone said to keep in
contact with other museums
when dealing with traveling
exhibits.
“I have passed on merchandise
to other museums where
the exhibit was going to and I
will often buy from a museum
that previously had an exhibition,”
she said. “If you take
their overstock, it helps them
and you. So when something
travels, I find where it’s going
and if they are interested in
taking my overstock, too.
Generally, if you deal with
posters and postcards, you will
sell through. If you get into
really specialized merchandise,
you may have stuff left over.”
But that’s not always the
case.
“Sometimes, we do have to
have thin gs custom made for
us,” Firestone added. “But
that can get costly because you
have to usually meet certain
minimums and you don’t want to buy more
than you need.”
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A shopper examines cards at the
Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington,
Conn. All of the shop’s stationery
features artwork from the museum.
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Torrez orders custom-
made postcards
for exhibitions that
come to the Contem -
porary Art Museum
St. Louis, but also
tries to find existing
merchandise.
“We try to work
with artists as much
as possible to see what
they have or to see if
they have recommendations,”
Torrez said.
“Many artists already
have posters, CDs,
things like that. But you have to be very careful because the
exhibitions don’t stick around and you don’t want to get
stuck with a lot of merchandise.”
“It is great when you can get pre-existing merchandise,
but sometimes it’s very difficult,” Monson said. “We are
doing a Dr. Seuss exhibit right now, and it’s a super hard
process because of the strict licensing. You have to do a lot of
detective work to find the right merchandise.”
Most museum shop managers, however, main tain that
tradition al stationery merchandise – posters, post cards, magnets
and note cards with art images from their respective
museums – remain
the best sellers.
“Postcards are al -
ways number one for
us,” Blankenship said,
noting that stationery
with images of “The
Architect’s Dream” by
Thomas Cole and
“Ophelia” by Arthur
Hughes remain top
sellers. “They are fast
and everyone buys
them. We sell tons of
prints, too.”
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Hill-Stead Museum Gift Shop
Manager Denise Bowen assists a customer
at the store. Merchandise follows
the museum’s impressionistic collection
closely.
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“You have to
remember that the
customer is coming
into your gift shop
looking for things they
can’t find in their own
stationery store,” said Len hardt, noting that postcards and
posters constantly sell out that contain popular pieces
including “The Extraordinary Musical Dog” by Philip
Reinagle and the Faberge Imperial Czarevich Easter Egg that
has been reproduced in everything from note cards to
Christmas ornaments. “We really try to focus on reproducing
as much as we can and filling in the gaps. We have some
art by (Andy) Warhol, and they are very strict about what you
can reproduce. So you are forced to buy stuff from the
Warhol Foundation.
You just have to
make sure you have
what your customers
are looking for.”
“Postcards are al -
ways big because
they are moderately
priced,” Monson
said. “Be cause of
the economy, the
higher priced items
just aren’t selling
like they did over
the last two years.
People want a piece
of their memories to
take home. So we
always focus on our
museum first,
Wyoming next and then mountains after that.”
Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington,
Conn., only carries stationery that features
its own artwork.
“We are a house museum, so what
you see in our gift shop is what is hanging
on our walls,” said Gift Shop
Manager Denise Bowen of the impressionistic
art museum. “All of our paintings
cannot leave our premises, and we
can’t even bring in visiting artwork. So
anything we carry in posters and postcards
is of our artwork that we have
here. We pretty much have the same
stuff most of the time. We can’t really switch.”
Hill-Stead’s number one sellers are magnets in five styles,
including “The Dancers in Pink” by Degas and “Antibes” by
Monet, as well as Japanese woodblock prints.
Although the Akron Art Museum mostly offers merchandise
from special exhibits, it does carry some custom postcards,
including a Raphael Gleitsman painting of downtown
Akron titled “Winter Evening.”
“We will do things like that as well as some that include
pictures of our building, which is really amazing architecturally,”
Firestone said. “We are working on adding a magnet
right now that has our building on it. But overall, postcards
do excellent, while posters are probably the least popular.
Everyone wants to take home a little piece of the museum,
and since you are not able to take photographs in the gallery,
postcards are a great way to
get a keepsake or send along
to someone. I think it’s really
important to offer things that
are unique to your museum,
whether it’s images of your
building or from artwork
specifically in your collection.
Use regional artists and whatever
your icons are for your
institution.”
Torrez said stationery is generally a
safe bet.
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Denise Bowen, gift shop manager at the
Hill-Stead Museum, said artwork magnets
are best sellers for the store.
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“It moves pretty quickly,” she said.
“Smaller places like ours need to order
smaller quantities, but I am constantly
ordering. I order a lot of stuff online
because with flat stuff, you get a good
idea of what it will look like. And you
can also hunt around and find some
pretty good prices. When I work with
independent vendors, sometimes they
will offer me an extra sleeve of cards or
free shipping if I order online.”
When it comes to ordering stationery,
art museum gift shop managers
advised to be conservative.
“We unfortunately have a pretty small gift shop, and I just
won’t overbuy,” Bowen said. “Basically, I get my budget, go
heavy on ordering for our busy period from April through
October and then sit idle. You have to live within your
means. Luckily, we are holding our own despite the economy,
but I think that’s because we are so close to major cities
like New York and Boston and you can only see certain
paintings here. So people come.”
“Each museum store is going to have a different client
base that they have to understand,” Blankenship added, noting
that its new Internet store has helped reach people outside
of the museum shop to boost sales despite the struggling
economy. “But I think no matter where you are, you should
specialize in what your collection is first because that’s what
is expected and that should
lead to success. For us, we
don’t get into things that are
not art related. We want all of
our stationery to pertain to
our art collection, art in general
or culture-related products.
If you spend the time
knowing your customer and
do the research, you will figure
it out.”
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