New gift shop goods draw thousands to Art Museum

"Use what is dominant in a culture to change it quickly," reads the rim of a crystal bowl for sale in the Princeton University Art Museum gift shop. The artist, Jenny Holzer, is known for her use of truisms, printed on everything from signs and fliers to the human skin. The bowl is shop manager Jeff Fields' favorite item in stock.

When asked to point out some other noteworthy objects, Fields gravitated first to a frost blue, sleek-lined camera with a pull string that lets it capture a moving image —"It's just a great contemporary art form" — before he darted over to a gift box labeled, "Six Graphic Comments on the State of the Contemporary Black Sock and Its Relation to the Foot, the Ankle, and the Human Condition."

"There's this new Babar book with all these works of art, but rather than being people or something, they're elephants," he added. He rushed across the shop to the children's area, and specifically to a shelf of wooden animal pull toys designed by Alexander Calder, an artist represented in the museum's collection.

The shop's new merchandise and more varied inventory have added to the visual impact of the museum's entrance, and they are a part of the museum's effort to redefine itself and reach out to new patrons. The statement about positive, sweeping change that Holzer printed on her crystal bowl seems to have resonated with Fields, the key figure behind the shop's new look. He has years of retail experience and an advanced degree in art; he is designing a necktie for sale in the shop.

The museum is working on "increasing accessibility, but also targeting members of the University community who haven't taken advantage of the museum in the past," museum director Susan Taylor said.

The changes have worked. Attendance is up.

"We've gone up from 70,000 to 100,000 visitors this past year," said Becky Sender, the museum's associate director.

According to the museum's business manager Mike Brew, the expanded shop was a result of a "desire to provide a superior service to our patrons and enhance their visit to the art museum while at the same time providing an improved source of revenue."

Since last November, Fields has been in charge of the shop. Before his arrival docents staffed it, and it sold books and journals, cards with images from the Princeton collection and a few other gift items, he said. He has maintained an emphasis on publications and added contemporary art, design, and cultural items, children's toys, gifts, and objects from other museums to the mix.

"When I got here I hit the ground running," Fields said. "I wanted to keep a sense of humor in the shop, make it fun, make it creative. I like to take what we've produced from our own collection and add to it. I keep it ongoing, so it correlates a lot with what's in the galleries. The shop is kind of working around the scholarly aspect of the museum."

There has been some grumbling about the shop's new focus. "You'll hear many different perspectives," said Patricia Fortini Brown, the chair of the art and archaeology department, stressing that she is herself a fan. "One of the more extreme complaints I've heard is people not knowing where the museum is." In other words, some worry the shop is a barrier to accessing the art itself.

"But there are a lot of museums where you enter through the gift shop," Brown added.

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"It offers the opportunity to get to know the collection through the shop, with objects related to the collection and to contemporary arts," Taylor said. "We've increased our sales enormously; people are very interested in what we've offered."

The new shop exists alongside several new museum programs, such as the "First Fridays" events with music and refreshments designed to expose students to the museum's collections, exhibitions geared toward departments beyond art and architecture (such as structural engineering and music) and a student guide program.

"My big thrust is getting people to know about the museum and get involved," Fields said. Fields credited Taylor as the driving force behind most of the changes to the museum and shop.

Though museum administrators are making efforts to reach out to patrons across the Princeton community, Fields is most committed to reaching out to students. He pointed to the shop's biggest seller — a postcard mobile. "I brought it in as a way for students to say, 'I love these images and I can take them home and hang them in my room,'" he said.