INDIE ROCKS
Museum and gallery gift shops are a gold mine of indie, emerging and local designs.
Museum and art gallery gift shops can be excellent places to look for designer finds.
Instagram and Etsy might seem the obvious places to discover a soon-to-be-beloved accessory or jewellery maker, but art gallery and museum gift shops can be great sources of under-theradar talent. These retail venues are champions of design ideas and crafts at a time when our world is so full of stuff made at the expense of our planet and other people—or not made by people at all. Gallery and museum boutiques can also offer a wealth of locally made items—the perfect token to bring home after an exciting trip or something to help you #shoplocal in your own city.
“The most rewarding side of my job is giving local artisans visibility,” says Isabelle Trottier, manager and buyer for the boutique and bookstore at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA). Each year, the museum— which recently closed a fashioncentric exhibition of designer Thierry Mugler’s work—welcomes over one million guests through its doors, and the store itself receives approximately 150,000 to 200,000 potential customers. You can imagine what that kind of exposure does for a designer or brand, especially if it’s emerging and independent. “Our visitors very often ask which of the jewellery is made locally,” says Trottier. “They are very surprised when we respond ‘Everything except for one showcase.’ It is faster to say what is not produced locally than the opposite.”
The buyers and retail managers who oversee museum and gallery shops have a task similar to that of the curators: to identify what materials, shapes and stories will resonate, much like how institutions decide on their themes and exhibitions for each season. And while this might sound like what buyers in conventional fashion retail do, occupying this role in the museum or gallery world ultimately leads to a different bottom line.
“The biggest difference, and the reason why I came here, is that so much of what drives a decision at a large for-profit company is financial,” says Shane Salvata, a buyer for the shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). Salvata held buying positions at Saks Fifth Avenue and Old Navy before coming to the museum’s shop in 2014, but what fulfills her at her current job is the personal nature of the work. “At a smaller place like a museum, you’re dealing directly with the designer,” she says. “In some cases, you’re going to their workshop or studio. You really feel like they’re taking you along with them on the creative process.”
The SFMoMA shop’s styleminded assortment includes Toulouse-based brand Nach, which boasts a porcelain-jewellery specialty; Issey Miyake’s iconic architectural Bao Bao bag; and Canadian designer Corey Moranis’s outsized Lucite pieces. Moranis’s handmade work was brought to Salvata’s attention by the shop’s visual merchandiser, who was following Moranis on Instagram. “She became obsessed with a smoky knot necklace with a gold chain,” recalls Salvata. “She was showing me her Christmas wish list last year, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I love that!’”
What draws Salvata to pieces like Moranis’s—and is the prevailing criterion for retailers and buyers at galleries and museums—is the mix of provenance, skill and specialness. »
“Immediately, it was the sculptural element of her work,” says Salvata. “It’s almost like a Koons—something that has this twisty, bendy manipulation of materials.”
Uniqueness is also a selling point for Susan Noonan, a jewelleryfocused consultant/buyer for the shop at the Royal Academy (RA) of Arts in London. “A lot of people feel they’ve got enough of everything,” she says. “We provide a way in, and reasons why you might want to invest in something special, that has more meaning.”
The RA Shop carries Spanish brand Joidart, Buenos Aires’s Sibilia and pieces by U.K.-based designers like Grainne Morton, whose eclectic, mismatch-y jewellery has become a favourite of the style set. (Her pieces accessorized designer Ulla Johnson’s Spring 2020 runway show.) “Some people are in gift-buying mode for themselves or for others,” says Noonan of the shop’s customers and what they’re seeking. “Some want to remember their visit in whatever form; it’s our job to broaden those ideas of what mementoes could be.”
In this way, gallery and museum buyers contribute to our visual landscape in the same way art does: by augmenting our reality through beauty and thought provocation. “I do not intend to create pieces that are only ‘in-fashion accessories’ as much as pieces that will, surely, reflect the world and era we live in but mostly that will last for the longest time,” says Montreal-based designer Gabrielle Desmarais, whose work is found at the MMFA shop as well as the jewellery-focused Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h.
The passion that buyers have for the practice of jewellery- and accessory-making is crucial, and it’s something that Catherine Birch, director of retail for the shop at the Cooper Hewitt in New York, cultivates with aplomb. Birch was part of a panel called “Jewelry Outside the Jewelry Store: A Conversation” during the last New York City Jewelry Week’s programming; the talk centred around why and how jewellery should become an essential part of “any retailer’s repertoire.” “One of the differences in shopping at a brand store versus a museum store is that the brand store is attracting a more specific customer,” says Birch. “In a museum store, it’s a celebration of the past, present, future and design.” At this point in history, when we’re being urged to consider what we need and why, such an ethos is certainly timely if not utterly imperative.
“We and reasons provide a why way you in, might want to invest in something special, that has more meaning.”