That great holiday gift might be at a museum
On ‘Museum Sunday,’ county institutions will reach out to shoppers.
As shoppers pack big-box chains and local malls looking for deals this Thanksgiving weekend, Palm Beach County’s museums are hoping a new international campaign will bring the holiday shopping rush to their stores and gift shops.
More than 500 museums and cultural groups across the world, including at least five in Palm Beach County, will participate in the newly launched Museum Store Sunday — a day dedicated to raising awareness about unique gifts in museum shops and how the sales of those items benefit the community.
The event will be held on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, sandwiched between two similar shopping campaigns — Small Business Saturday, the day dedicated to boosting sales for small momand-pops, and Giving Tuesday, a day designed to raise money for philanthropic causes.
Among the local museums and cultural groups participating in the inaugural event: Morikami Museum in Delray Beach, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, and the South Florida Science
Center in West Palm Beach.
“We have Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, so I guess Sunday was up for grabs,” said Susan Keller, director of retail operations at the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach.
“The message is to be a patron of the arts and of your local museum. Instead of going to a mall, come to a museum and purchase a gift with purpose,” she said.
Gift shop purchases help museums pay for their programming and advance their mission, according to the Museum Store Association, the national nonprofit group behind the campaign. The stores offer a variety of curated and unique gift items that can fit almost any budget, the association added.
“The general public already loves shopping in museum stores, because they know they can find something different,” said Julie Steiner, president of the Museum Store Association’s board of directors and director of retail operations at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
“Museum Store Sunday gives people a chance to support local businesses, give back to the community through local nonprofit museums, support good causes, find unique holiday gifts, and enjoy an entertaining and educational experience at favorite museums, all at the same time.”
The store at the Morikami Museum carries a variety of Japanese gifts, including everything from small items that cost as little as $2 to hand-stitched wedding kimonos that sell for $1,000, Keller said.
To help promote Museum Store Sunday, Keller said the store will be giving shoppers who spend at least $25 a special gift — a tea canister featuring an image of a maneki-neko, a well-known Japanese cat figurine with an upraised paw that is often believed to bring good luck to the owner.
“Everything that the store makes goes back to support the educational programs in the museum,” Keller said.
The Boca Raton Museum of Art will be offering free admission — courtesy of PNC Bank — on Museum Store Sunday to help encourage visitors to shop at its store.
“This is a unique shopping experience that gives customers not just a chance to get a gift that is different, but also to support a nonprofit,” said Aylin Tito, the associate director of museum store and visitor experience at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
“It is definitely something positive that we wanted to be a part of,” she said.
The store features a mix of unique items including work by local artists, contemporary designs for the home, art books, toys for kids and jewelry.
Tito said the museum tries to find items for the shop that are tied to the museum’s current exhibit.
Among the store’s holiday offerings: artsy sound recorders that are handmade in Brooklyn using American sustainable wood; handmade espresso mugs; screenprinted, 100 percent linen tea towels and handkerchiefs; and jewelry by New York-based contemporary designer Diana Broussard.