Museums Exhibit a Knack for Licensing

Art museums around the world are expanding their licensing efforts, continuing a trend that has intensified over the past several years. Licensed products and experiences can be a way to raise awareness by bringing museums’ brands and artwork into new places, generate ancillary revenue that helps keep the institution open and support its mission, and educate consumers about the collections and perhaps entice them to visit. 

Recent trends of note, as illustrated by licensing and collaboration deals announced in the last year or so, include: 

• Expanding into new geographies. Museums around the world, especially in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Asia, are not only further building their licensing programs locally and regionally, but globally as well. Asia is one area of focus for western institutions. The Met—one of the fastest-growing museum-based licensing programs in the last few years, with recent initiatives ranging from a 44-piece home goods array with Anthropologie to wedding stationery with Minted—recently appointed Pacific Licensing Studio as its agent for Greater China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, for example. (Beanstalk is its master licensee.) And Artistory Brands, a licensing agent and merchandiser, has opened two physical stores in Shanghai in the last year, in partnership with its clients The British Library and the Centre Pompidou.

• Creating location-based entertainment. This trend is intensifying around the world, with Asia again being a particularly active market. Examples range from the Natural History Museum in London launching a touring theatrical production, “Dinosaurs Live!,” across the U.K., to the University of Cambridge Museums & Botanic Garden pairing with Artistory for interactive History of Science exhibitions in China and Southeast Asia starting in 2025. 

• Retaining new agents to assist in launching or expanding licensing efforts. Jewel Branding & Licensing became the representative for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s brand extensions, and Blonde Sheep Licensing signed on to represent Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum, an institution in Spain known for its American art collections, both in 2024. London’s Tate Museums, meanwhile, signed Artistory as their global agent last month.  

• Entering new product categories that are nontraditional in the museum space, which can take the brand into new distribution channels as well. The Van Gogh Museum is one example. It recently launched a construction kit with Lego to enable fans to create Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”; bicycles with Solé, featuring a pattern from the artist’s “Almond Blossom”; and seven glasses frames, along with a frame case and cleaning cloth set, with Pair Eyewear, inspired by works such as “View of a Butcher’s,” “Wheatfield,” and “The Yellow House.” The museum, which is represented by IMG for licensing, has a collection that is particularly accessible and popular among art aficionados and mainstream consumers alike, which makes the leap to new categories logical. But its expansion into products that might be viewed as innovative or unexpected compared to historic museum merchandising norms is mirrored by other institutions as well. 

The art museum sector is coming back from the devastation of the pandemic shutdowns, but it still faces challenges, economic and otherwise, in bringing visitors back. In the U.S., for example, half of museums report that they have not yet returned to pre-pandemic attendance levels, according to the American Alliance of Museums’ fall 2024 “National Snapshot of United States Museums.” Those institutions report an average attendance equal to 78% of the pre-pandemic benchmark. The percentage of U.S. adults reporting attending a museum in the past year was 33%, the survey said, slightly higher than the 25% to 31% level typical in pre-pandemic years. But these visitors are going to their favorite museum less frequently and are stopping in at fewer different museums than before the shutdowns. 

Licensed products available globally are one tool museums have at their disposal to remind consumers about their brands and holdings, with a hoped-for result of bringing more of them into the building to see the artwork featured on their products, in its original glory.