Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

I confess. I confess I put the word "beloved" in the title to hook you -- a writerly deceit I'm not above using.

Truth is, I don't find any museum shop "beloved," though I really do like some of them. Which ones? Lemme see ... generally the ones with the most book titles, books being my intellectual drug-of-choice. Some of you might use prints, reproductions, calendars or other items as the yardstick.

Herewith is a top o' the head listing of museum shops I liked as of the time I last visited. They are not in order of preference.

• Louvre, Paris. This is on two floors and has lotsa stuff which seems appropriate for a museum that has lotsa stuff. Yes the books are pretty much in French, but that's okay with me because I like to be forced to keep up my French. The shop in the Museé d'Orsay across the river is much smaller because it focuses on a limited period in art history. The last time I was there I wasn't studying Impressionism as seriously as I am now, so I might like it better than I did if I gave it another visit.

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Not as large as the Louvre's shop, but plenty of books and other items. The Met also has a shop in Rockefeller Center as well as one at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas and two in Thailand (32 stores in all, 13 overseas), but the satellites I've visited don't have large book selections.

• Getty Museum, Los Angeles. A good selection of books, especially (as might be expected) publications by the Getty research staff. But if your thing is art-related books and you're in the Los Angeles area, the place to go is the Hennessey + Ingalls bookstore on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, a block or so from the bluff overlooking the ocean.

• A nice little store with a tight focus is in the Mucha Museum in Prague, featuring (who else?) Alphonse Mucha, king of the Art Nouveau poster..

• I like aviation, and the top shop for me is in the Air Force Museum by Dayton, Ohio. Second-best is in the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum on the Mall in Washington. Pretty-good is the shop in the Museum of Flight at Seattle's Boeing Field. My criterion for aviation books is the presence of specialized books not normally found in regular bookstores. But the store that tops my aviation heap isn't a museum shop: it's La Maison du Livre d'Aviation in Paris at 75 Boulevard Malesherbes in the 8th Arrondissement.

• As you might guess by the volume of posts on the subject, I'm also a car fan. But I can't remember any automobile museum shops that had a book selection that impressed me. This might be because my tastes are becoming highly specialized whereas the museum shops I've visited recently don't seem to have a lot more to offer than regular bookstores. I know of bookstores in London, Paris and Lyon that have (or had) what I like. But pickings are slim in overseas plane and car bookstores since most books in these fields are in English and can be found here in America
  

I suspect I've missed a number of good museum stores and will try to make good on that in future travels. This might take a while because when I travel I spend a lot more time exploring city streets than museum galleries.

Feel free to pitch in with your faves.

Later,

Donald

How about the MOMA shop? Great section of books about design. And across the street, there's a really nice shop with even more great stuff.

Posted by: Dave Munger on March 8, 2006 08:24 AM

The Smithsonian in Washington has a great gift shop. So does the Chicago Art Institut, and as I recall, so does the Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

On the other hand, the St. Louis Art Museum is small but very good...and one of the worst giftshop/bookstores ever!

Posted by: annette on March 8, 2006 10:56 AM

Hmm, I don't know if you would consider a "National Historical Park" a museum (they seem closely related to me), but I've often found their gift shops interesting. They often have deep and narrow selections of books on subjects that interest me.

I'll specifically mention the shop at Ft. Laramie in Wyoming, which has a very good selection of frontier military books, and the shop at the visitor's center at Gettysburg.

Posted by: Doug Sundseth on March 8, 2006 12:26 PM

Dahesh Museum (salon art) and Rubin Museum (Himalayan art) in NYC. Also American Museum of Natural History (the Dino-store) and National Building Museum in DC.

Posted by: winifer skattebol on March 9, 2006 12:10 AM

I love Hennessey + Ingalls. If books are your main objective then Powell's City of Books in Portland is definitely the place to go (for art books or any other type).

Posted by: claire on March 10, 2006 12:47 AM






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