An interdisciplinary conference organised by Birkbeck’s Centre for Museum Cultures.

This symposium explores museums through the objects sold within them. Since the development of museums as public attractions in the 18th century, they have provided some form of merchandise (Larkin, 2016). In recent years, financial instability and the revenue-generating possibilities of shops have made them increasingly important to how museums operate. They are, however, under-researched in academia.

The objects sold in museum shops can show us much about the intersection of museums, visitors’ appetites and expectations, and the power of brands. Some, such as a Van Gogh ‘ear-aser’ or Francis Bacon cushions might be classed as ‘kitsch’ and push the acceptable boundaries of taste (Monica Kjellman-Chapin, 2020). Others, like Christmas tree decorations of Winston Churchill, point to the intersections of ‘big P and small p’ politics. So too, can the objects sold in museums, heritage sites and ‘experiences’, like a Monet sleeping mask, highlight a homogeneity in art and design as a result of expired Copyright laws. These objects, far from being benign, can define and limit the imaginative possibilities afforded by museums as viscerally as the objects on display in exhibitions.

Drawing inspiration from, and held in conjunction with, the Cursed Objects podcast this symposium aims to explore the meanings of objects sold in museum shops. This includes a broad definition of shops in museums, for example, online or physical gift shops, cafes, and kiosks. The term ‘cursed’ is used here to nod to the popular usage of the term on the internet that relates to images or things that are uncanny, complex, visceral and visually unpleasant. Rather than dismiss the items sold in museum shops as mass-produced and, therefore, less significant than museum collections, this symposium asks how material culture and ephemera can historically and in the present be used as a means to better understand museums and the cultures they exist within.

Important questions that will be raised at this symposium include: How do (or don’t) the objects within museum shops relate to museum exhibitions? How might the ‘tat’ sold in museum shops be reconceived as ‘material culture’? Why are some forms of merchandise found in museums that are unrelated to the institution’s primary remit? What can the objects in museum shops tell us about late capitalism? How do museum shops shape tastes in consumption historically and in the present? Who are museum shops for? Do museum-branded pencils, highlighter pens and rulers have ‘agency’?