{"id":19307,"date":"2013-02-20T00:06:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T05:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=19307"},"modified":"2013-02-20T00:06:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T05:06:17","slug":"exit-through-the-gift-shop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/exit-through-the-gift-shop\/","title":{"rendered":"“Exit Through the Gift Shop”*"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t resist a museum gift shop. When I’m at one in real life, I’m drawn to catalogs and books. On the Internets<\/a>, I look at fashion. Last night, I was browsing some gift shops online when I hit the Guggenheim<\/a>‘s site. Why didn’t I know that this New York City museum sells a reproduction of Peggy Guggenheim’s sunglasses?<\/p>\n

\"guggenheim_2247_12664394\"<\/a>

Peggy’s shades. $250. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

Margaret “Peggy” Guggenheim was the niece of the wealthy American art enthusiast Solomon Guggenheim (1861-1949). He established the art foundation that created the Guggenheim, which is officially named the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Peggy (1898-1979) was a collector of\u00a0Cubist, abstract and Surrealist art herself; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection is in Venice, Italy<\/a>. Among the avant-garde artists she promoted were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Georges Braque, Salvador Dal\u00ed and Piet Mondrian. Some of Peggy’s art was wearable. When she established a gallery in New York City in 1942, she wore mismatching earrings for opening night: one by Surrealist Yves Tanguy<\/a> and one by sculptor Alexander Calder<\/a>. She selected them to “show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract Art<\/a>.” Very fair of her. But the sunglasses designed for her by the artist Edward Melcarth were her signature look.<\/p>\n

\"peggy\"<\/a>

Photo of Peggy in her glasses via Advanced Style. Click for source.<\/p><\/div>\n

I need to run to the Guggenheim and try those shades on! And see the art, of course.<\/p>\n

In other museum-shop news, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum<\/a> is opening an exhibit devoted to David Bowie next month. Some of the related merchandise is already on the website<\/a>, with more to come. Maybe I need to get this guitar pick. I could turn it into an earring to take the place of the treasured ’80s pick earring that I lost last year.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"bowieguitarpick\"<\/a>

75 pence. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tate Modern<\/a>, also in London, is opening a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective tomorrow. I bet Stacy Lomman<\/a> could style the “Hopeless” t-shirt for me.<\/p>\n

\"lichtenstein_hopeless_tshirt_g2062_large\"<\/a>

\u00a325.00. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

My most remarkable museum souvenir, at least in terms of longevity, is an astrology ring that I got at New York’s Hayden Planetarium<\/a>. If I recall correctly, I was still in elementary school when I got this.<\/p>\n

\"capricorn\"

I’m a Capricorn.<\/p><\/div>\n

It looks great, right? I think its size and shape influenced a couple of my ring designs. I definitely favor rings with round tops, such as my Juana peekaboo skull ring<\/a> and Hathor swivel ring.<\/p>\n

\"Hathor_Ring_80__55660_std\"<\/a>

Click for more information on the Hathor swivel ring.<\/p><\/div>\n

Back when I got the gift-shop ring, the American Museum of Natural History <\/a>— which includes the planetarium — was my favorite place in the world. I liked the spooky dioramas and the dinosaur bones. I wanted to stay at the museum overnight, so the book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler<\/em><\/a> by E.\u00a0L.\u00a0Konigsburg<\/a> was a big hit with me even though the children in it ran away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art <\/a>rather than the Museum of Natural History. The Metropolitan Museum gave me a spooky feeling too, so it was close enough. Flash forward a few decades to 2006, when the first Night at the Museum<\/em><\/a> movie came out. It was set at the right museum — the natural-history museum — so <\/em>I knew I would love the movie before I even saw it. When I did see it, I kept thinking, “I KNEW it would be like this at night! I KNEW IT!” In fact, just this moment, I got all excited to see on the website that the museum has a Night at the Museum tour.<\/a> But it seems to be a tour of the exhibits behind the characters featured in the Night at the Museum<\/em> movies rather than a sleepover. Dammit! When am I going to get to stay at a museum overnight? There should be slumber-party tickets sold in museum gift shops. I would sleep in museums all over the world if I had the opportunity. I’d be a wanton woman with art and artifacts, and I wouldn’t be ashamed of it.<\/p>\n

*Exit Through the Gift Shop<\/a>,<\/a> the maybe real\/maybe not, Academy Award-nominated documentary by street-artist Banksy, is available on Netflix<\/a>.<\/em> <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can’t resist a museum gift shop. When I’m at one in real life, I’m drawn to catalogs and books. On the Internets, I look at fashion. Last night, I was browsing some gift shops online when I hit the Guggenheim‘s site. Why didn’t I know that this New York City museum sells a reproduction…<\/p>\n

Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85,86,440,6,33,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art","category-movies","category-museums","category-rings","category-sunglasses","category-t-shirts","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19307"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19332,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19307\/revisions\/19332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}