Museum Stores Have the Best Gifts
On Sunday, December 1, don't forget to exit through the gift shop.
I have a friend whose kid is obsessed with the New York City subway system. He has all but memorized the schedule of the Q train (his train), is always up to date on what lines are being rerouted, and can tell me which train would be the fastest option to get to Times Square from basically any location I spring on him. (Who needs Google maps when you have your own little rail savant?)
It’s pretty obvious then, why his favorite place is the New York City Transit Museum, with its vintage cars and holiday train shows and exhibits on the evolution of transportation, in an old subway station itself. But perhaps his favorite part is the museum gift shop. The items in the Transit Museum’s gift shop are the platonic ideal of museum gift shop items: informative, quirky, nostalgic, and wholly irreverent. My buddy has little subway train replicas, transit maps, mapped-out socks and t-shirts, and even a subway map clock. He’s gotten his dad cufflinks made from old subway tokens. And whenever he has a new friend over, these items are an excuse to talk about his passion for transit.
A good museum store is an extension of the museum, where the experience is distilled and remixed into pocket-sized mementos. Items are often locally-made, representing and supporting the community, with purchases going towards artists and the cultural institutions themselves. But if you’re unfamiliar with the joys and versatility of the museum gift shop, there’s some good news: On Sunday, December 1st, you’ll have plenty of chances to purchase unique, mission-driven gifts for everyone on your list, when more than 2,100 museum stores spanning all 50 states and in 25 countries will participate in the eighth annual Museum Store Sunday.
With the help of the organizing team, we've put together a list of some of the more unique spaces participating in Museum Store Sunday to get you started. And even if it’s not on December 1st, the next time you visit a museum, don’t forget to exit through the gift shop.
Seattle, Washington
For any aviation enthusiast in your life, the Museum of Flight is a must-do, housing tens of thousands of artifacts including over 175 aircraft and spacecraft, including the first-ever Boeing 747. But we have to be honest: We covet everything in the gift shop, from the paper airplane earrings to this astronaut vase to a model Concorde. And who wouldn’t want freeze-dried ice cream? Just saying, you can’t go wrong.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
We’re big fans of the criminal justice mission of Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the most expensive prisons built when it was completed in 1836 as a massive institution promoting the “penitence model.” Today it is a museum dedicated to education and prison reform, with tours and one heck of a Halloween festival. Gift store items all fund its serious vision, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a little fun, with perhaps a tin cup or key charm bracelet, or a shot glass with one of the prison’s most famous residents, Al Capone.
Phoenix, Arizona
The Musical Instrument Museum was founded out of a desire to go beyond the documentation of Western instruments, and illustrate that music is indeed the universal language. This treasure trove is now the largest museum of musical instruments in the world, housing over 7,500 instruments from 200 countries. And of course you can purchase some fun and unique instruments of your own, like painted wooden egg shakers made by Indonesian artisans, Peruvian clay bird water whistles, singing bowls made in Nepal, or a Thai guiro shaped like a frog. When you run the stick along its back, it mimics a frog sound.
Cleveland, Ohio
On Museum Store Sunday shoppers at the Rock Hall will receive twenty percent off their purchase, with items including locally-made products from Cleveland artisans. This is also a rock museum, so you can get things like branded pedals in collaboration with Ohio-based EarthQuaker Devices, musician Funko Pops, and signed guitars, including one for the Def Leppard fan in your life (20 percent off $10,000 is a steal, if you ask us).
Casper, Wyoming
Wyoming has so many dinosaur bones that walk into this free gem of a museum—attached to Casper's community college—and the first thing you’ll notice is Dee the Mammoth, an 11,600-year-old Columbian Mammoth who is not only the world’s largest Mammoth specimen, but the most complete. (It’s named after the backhoe operator who found it while digging an oil well.) He towers over a space that also houses over 6,000 fossils and mineral specimens. As you can imagine the gift shop is also a geological and peleontological wonderland, with rocks, puzzles, digging tools, and some pretty unique jewelry. There’s no online store for this one, so you’ll have to take a trip to the museum to see the offerings. If you do, send our regards to Dee.
North Platte, Nebraska
From the Golden Spike Tower, you’re treated to an expansive aerial view of the world's largest classification railyard, as you can watch the crews of Union Pacific Railroad sort and connect over 10,000 rail cars a day from an open-air or enclosed platform. Then take a bit of the railway home with you, with gifts like a Locomotive Bank, a UPRR Denim Apron, or, to the point, a pin that says I <3 Trains.
Tacoma, Washington
This British outpost was the first European settlement on Puget Sound. Today its history is brought to life by volunteers and staff in period clothing, and heritage activities from the mid-19th century. Giftshop items also reflect the time period, like a hand-forged courting candle holder, made by volunteer blacksmiths, and traditionally used by young men when wooing their ladies (it’s said that when the young man came a-calling, he would stay until it burned to the first iron ring). In reality everyone can use them: it’s just a practical design for a candleholder.
Kansas City, Kansas
Jazz and blues culture were prominent in Kansas City in the 1920s, with dance halls, cabarets and speakeasies, but it didn’t quite explode until the 1930s thanks to political boss Tom Pendergast, who allowed alcohol to flow in Kansas City during prohibition, cementing it as an entertainment center. One area it flourished was 18th and Vine, where the African American community resided and where you’ll now find the American Jazz Museum, which shares a building with the also excellent Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. The gift shops are both worth a visit: In the jazz museum’s shop you’ll find plenty of things that look like other things, like salad tongs shaped like guitars, or spoons shaped like drumsticks. In the Negro Leagues Museum go for throwback gear, historical items, and bobbleheads of Buck O'Neil, Kansas City Monarch and the Black coach in Major League Baseball.
Indianapolis, Indiana
In the hometown of Kurt Vonnegut, this museum does more preserve the author’s legacy, it champions his spirit of free expression, sponsoring a literary magazine with contributors like Dave Eggers and Lewis Black, and actively working against book banning (when a Missouri high school banned Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, they offered students of the high school free copies). The Vonnegut fan would have a field day in his gift shop, with items from Tralfamordian stickers (the fictional alien race in Slaughterhouse-Five) to GHQ The Lost Board Game, a game Vonnegut designed for income after his first book was less than a financial success, which he ultimately failed to sell.