The Luxury Evolution Of The Museum Gift Shop

There are gift shops, and then there are gift shops. In the case of the former, visiting parties may be convinced to turn any number of pleasant tchotchkes into mementos, like an odd stack of postcards or a poster they may wait months or years to frame. But with the latter, emphatically italicized version, well — it’s more like an extension of the exhibition. Any postcards available for purchase are probably not sanctioned by the USPS. The retail offering at “Virgil Abloh: Freedom of Speech”, now running at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) through Sept. 29, is most certainly a gift shop, not gift shop. Technically, it’s a “pop-up store” on par with any Virgil Abloh, the famous polymath and designer behind both Off-White and Louis Vuitton men’s, has created throughout his career. But unlike his previous pop-ups on New York City’s Prince Street or Paris’s rue Saint-Honoré, this one can be accessed only by exhibit ticket holders. Read more at Fashionista.