
Museum Retail: An Oxymoron?
Retail thrives on change, innovation, novelty and trends. Museums, on the other hand, represent stability, refinement, reflection and the longer arc of history. This opposition of values is often manifested in the design of the museum store – the museum administrators and curators desiring a store that reflects the institution’s values and mission, the retail manager attracted to a design that is a bold statement and can be quickly remerchandised in response to customer inter