One of the few windows in the new Denver Art Museum building looks into gift-shop shelves lined with objets d’art by artists with work in the permanent collection, and gewgaws and goodies that might strike a creative spark in the rest of us.
From ooh-la-la-priced sculpted glass vessels by Dale Chihuly to slim folders of origami paper, the huge new shop has objects that fit most budgets and desires.
“We want to have things that you will not see anywhere else in Denver,” says Leonard Ricci, the store’s merchandise coordinator.
Think pottery made by artists featured in “Breaking the Mold,” a temporary exhibition of Virginia Mattern’s collection of contemporary Native American art ($75-150)and fused glass and metal sculpture and decorative art work by Sheryl Ellin-
wood ($15-$120) and Denver’s Blake Street Glass Studio ($400-$3,000).
The shop plays to the notion of who Coloradans are today with a red and black biking jersey ($79.95) designed in connection with a local Denver bike shop, and Chilewich totes ($113) and table runners made from recycled industrial plastic that looks like a dense tangle of spaghetti ($15-60).
The shop has many other one-of-a-kind clothing items, including a titanium-colored tie that echoes the tiles on the outside of the building for $42, a silk scarf with a similar pattern ($60), and a reversible tote bag for $25. There are also plans to develop a Rubik’s cube-style toy, with angles jutting every which way, to pay homage to architect Daniel Libeskind’s eye-
popping design for the Frederic C. Hamilton wing.
One of the store’s best-selling items so far, the Buddha Board ($9.95), taps into the collective Zen psyche of many museum goers; use a damp brush to draw pictures or write on a tablet and the image later dries and disappears. (The museum sold 250 of the tablets to donors and others who toured the Hamilton building before it opened last weekend.)
Following in the path of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the largest museum revenue producer in the country, at least a quarter of the store is devoted to books and CDs, with music listening stations like you’d find in a bookstore. A flat-panel TV screen high on the wall draws shoppers into the section.
The new store is 3,000-square feet, three times the size of the shop in the Ponti building, since moved to a new location. Each shop stocks merchandise that represents work displayed in its building.
It’s all the vision of retail operations manager William Okuley, who joined the museum in February, after a similar post at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. “I like to create my own zone,” Okuley says. “It’s kinda forward thinking for wherever I’ve been.”
The new store is filled with chic, expensive items and Okuley says that change required a hard sell to donors and others who have been involved with the museum for decades. “One of the things I came up against is, ‘Nobody will buy this, because it’s too expensive,”‘ Okuley says. “I’m very attuned to that. I want everybody to be able to buy something.”
Since many museumgoers are visitors to Denver, Okuley stocked plenty of small items, including an eyeglass case ($9.95) that folds flat and Libeskind-inspired watches, $22.95 for one with the distinctive zig-zag building outline, to $180 for a titanium timepiece.
And if you’re a kid – or just a kid at heart – there’s a children’s section heavy with paints, theater kits, puppetry, and soccer balls.
Soccer balls?
“I’m looking for color and interaction,” Okuley says. “You kinda want to buy something here.”
