Photos: Edward Hopper, “Nighthawks,” © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago; Masters Chair, © MoMA Store; Pablo Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
displays its objets in the former powder room and its books in, appropriately, the library of a 1914 Beaux Arts mansion—the Neue Galerie’s headquarters. Another historic home provides much of the charm of The Morgan Shop (The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave., 212.590.0390), which occupies two of the original rooms of the famed financier’s family manse—a music room, adorned with gilt moldings, marble fireplaces and two mirrors facing each other, and an adjoining chamber adorned with bay windows. Through them, the store makes a pretty picture on its residential side street—which might explain why “we get a lot of people just coming in for the shop,” claims Director of Merchandising Services Sean Hayes. Everything relates to the museum’s collection, and since Pierpont Morgan collected everything from geodes to Gutenberg Bibles, this makes for a pretty eclectic mix of merch. The homey array ranges from definitive monographs, like Monika Grzymala: 11 Works 2000–2011 (commemorating the Berlin artist’s current on-site
installation, thru Nov. 3) to Shakespearean foliolike leather notebooks; stationery and notecards, with facsimiles of firstedition art the museum owns, are big, as is anything with the impressively paneled library’s image on it. “We do as much unique merchandise as possible, for people to take a part of the Morgan with them,” Hayes explains. Giving people a chance to take a bit of the institution with them is also the aim of the Guggenheim Museum Store (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave., 800.329.6109). Located at the base of the museum’s smaller rotunda (look up to see its spiral), it greets visitors with dozens of colorful mobiles, evocative of the designs of Alexander Calder. The inventory abounds in contemporary art and handmade goods—not necessarily exclusive, but that “connect with the Guggenheim’s clean, fresh, cutting-edge identity,” says Managing Director for Business Development Karen Meyerhoff. Still, the core products are logo-based, or evocative of the museum’s most famous possession: its own building. There are models of the IN New YORK | august 2013 | innewyork.com
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