Museums, from the V&A in London to MoMA in New York, have been involved in both inbound and outbound licensing for a long time, and several players have been entering and expanding their licensing activities at a fast pace over the last two years. Institutions including The Met, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum, and others retained licensing agents to help them extend their brands further, while more than 80 Chinese cultural institutions have launched shops on e-commerce platforms Tmall and Taobao since early 2020.
At the same time, museums have been getting ever more creative with their licensing and merchandising efforts of late, experimenting with new types of deals and partners. A handful of examples illustrate some recent strategies:
- Reimagining the shop. The Aspen Art Museum turned its museum shop into a hybrid exhibition and retail outlet called The Store, in collaboration with artist Jonathan Berger. The space includes 350 objects curated by Berger, including mass-produced and exclusive, vintage and new, found and made items. Some are available for sale (at all prices, up to $50,000), some given away, and some on exhibit only. Exclusive products are included, created in collaboration with artists, perfumers, textile makers, and others. The design of the environment is inspired by the 1990s New York shopping scene and the fine artist-led stores that have popped up around the world over the years. There is even an exhibition catalog associated with the venture.
- Commissioning exclusive merchandise ranges. The Whitney Museum shop in New York collaborated with British artist Shantell Martin for a collection called LINE by Shantell Martin for Whitney Shop. It includes products by a variety of makers, each integrating Martin’s distinctive line drawings. The partnership represents the first time the shop has asked an artist to develop products tied to a specific theme. The collection is promoted heavily, including with a Martin drawing covering an entire transparent wall near the entrance to the shop. Examples of items in the assortment include playing cards from Theory 11 for $12, a two-sided blanket from EVERYBODY.WORLD for $220, and neon artwork from Lite Brite Neon Studio for $2,400.
- Collaborating with entertainment properties. The Louvre paired with Netflix and Hypebeast’s HBX brand for an exclusive eight-piece apparel and home goods capsule that paired imagery from the streamer’s Paris-set crime series Lupin with a stylized image of the museum’s glass pyramid. The products were available exclusively through HBX/Hypebeast, an online destination for luxury men’s contemporary and streetwear.
- Pairing with makers of handmade goods. The new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles features a limited collection (100 each of six designs) of chairs with all-over prints of Studio Ghibli imagery, tied to its exhibition of the work of Hayao Miyazaki, with artisanal furniture maker Modernica. Its collection of merchandise highlighting Bruce the Shark from Finding Nemo includes some bitmap-style pieces created with Susan Kare, the designer of Apple’s original smiling Mac icon. All told, it is currently featuring collaborations pairing items from its exhibitions and collections with the work of 11 Los Angeles artists and makers.
This list highlights just a few of the initiatives and strategies that have sprung up recently across the museum-licensing landscape, but it starts to give a sense of some of the innovative directions these institutions are heading when it comes to their merchandising efforts.
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