Stores, members and donors: the same people
A Seattle news nonprofit’s beanie, a public radio tumbler and what store filings show: why a cultural institution’s store, membership and development reach the same people.
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Art museums and public galleries | Botanical gardens and nature centers | For development | For the store | Performing arts organizations
The four calendars
Fifteen cultural institutions whose public filings we examined close their fiscal years in five different months. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Seattle Art Museum close theirs in June. Mount Vernon, Crystal Bridges and the Corning Museum of Glass close in December. Longwood Gardens and Desert Botanical Garden close in September, the Oregon…
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The second order
A quote describes one order. For an institution that will need merchandise again next year, and the year after, the more useful thing to evaluate is what working together will look like by the second order and the fifth. That shows up early: in the first conversation, before any price is on the table. Addiss…
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Why the date you were given is not the date
Museums have been raising prices, and some of them name tariffs as part of the reason. The American Alliance of Museums’ 2025 National Snapshot of United States Museums surveyed 511 museum directors in July and August 2025. It found that 58 percent of museums had raised prices in at least one category over the previous…
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When the lobby becomes part of the performance
At the North American premiere of Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon at Atlanta Ballet in February 2024, the audience arrived in black and white. This was not planned. Atlanta Ballet did not put a dress code in the program. But the production’s identity had telegraphed itself clearly enough in advance marketing that…
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The seasonal problem
A botanical garden in April is a different place than the same garden in October, and not just in the obvious sense that different things are blooming. The visitor’s emotional register changes. What they are looking for changes. The pace of a walk through a garden in spring, when everything is opening, carries a different…
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The object after the object
There is a specific quality of attention that settles over people in a well-designed museum gallery. It is not the same as reading, or watching, or listening to music. It is something closer to sustained looking, the kind that accumulates slowly and leaves a particular residue when it is over. The museum store sits at…
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What the store tells you about the institution
There is a version of the museum store that has nothing to do with the collection. Generic tote bags in institutional colors. A rack of postcards. Journals with the logo embossed on the cover. These objects are not wrong exactly, but they communicate something specific: the institution has not thought very hard about this room….
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What you take home from a living thing
The Hillwood shop in Washington sits in a genuinely unusual position. On one side of it is one of the most significant collections of Russian imperial art outside of Moscow, Fabergé eggs and imperial porcelain and pieces acquired during the decade when Soviet authorities were selling off tsarist holdings. On the other side, through the…
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The permanent collection problem
The case for exhibition-linked merchandise is not hard to make. A traveling show creates urgency. The opening brings people who are specifically excited about the subject matter. The window is defined, which makes buying decisions easier. You order for the run, you clear inventory when it closes, you move on. The logic is clean. The…