PANEL PROPOSAL
Museum Shops: Culture, Commerce, Controversy

Historically, museums have provided catalogues and reproductions as means to (inexpensively) disseminate their knowledge about collections and in so doing expand their educational reach beyond their exhibition halls. Falk and Dierking (1992) have long argued for the shop to be part of the museum experience, with an excellent potential for the long-term educational impact of museums. More recently, Komarac, et al., (2019) and Kent (2010) have argued for the role of the museum shop as part of the overall experience. Larking (2019) (and Barton, 1934; Macdonald, 2012) argue that the visual influence of the collections contributes to social cultural capital formation (‘taste-making’).

The consumer expects museum shops to provide unique, quality goods linked to the collection (Larkin, 2019:147; Falk and Dierking, 1992), since their wider appearance in the 1970s and 1980s. Tourists may prefer reproductions, replicas and adaptations, as literal references to their visit, while locals may favour interpretations and new creations made by local artists (Iranowska, 2019). Most museum visitors appreciate the opportunity to bridge the museum experience back to their daily lives through souvenirs, which contribute to free-choice learning (Falk and Storksdieck, 2010) and conduce to the reflection and conceptualization of the visit through a “real experience that contrasts with the artifice of the museum’s displays” (Kent, 2010:75).

Little literature is available on museum shops, perhaps due to the belief that the museum shop highlights a commercial side of the non-profit institution that should otherwise be oriented towards education about their collections. However, European museum shops have not been lucrative, with catalogues often representing a loss, except for the large superstar museums who can benefit from strong branding (Frey, 2004). The online museum shop promises expanded market reach and liberation from the challenges associated with limited physical space. However, there is little empirical evidence on the online museum product supply.

The 2020 pandemic forced museums to close their doors missing out on ticket sales. Remote services flourished, and museums responded by delivering much online content, though most of it for free. It can be expected that museums will consider moving their shops online, contingent on available funds for investing in technology and for developing innovative new products.

Trabskaia et al., (2019) highlight that it is necessary to commit to the modernization of both the digital and physical platforms of museum stores, as well as the development of products that are a consequence of a constant dialogue between museum institutions, museum managers. cultural and creative industries. Competitive thinking in these spaces is imperative, because distinctive, different and exclusive products are required, which cannot be found in any souvenir store. An element that the authors introduce is the importance of products from museum stores as a representation of local culture and, therefore, facilitating the construction of the City Brand.

For a long time, research into museum stores appeared with the desire to diversify and expand the income source, which will allow these institutions to maintain their daily operations, mainly focused on the marketing component. As Ampuero-Canellas et al., (2018) point out, this commercial dimension is already more than consolidated and has become a must-visit space for museum visitors. This renewed importance of museum stores forces us, as Jamie Larkin (2020) says, to rethink and redefine them. Researchers have begun to pay attention to these spaces' educative, cultural, awareness-raising, transformative and experiential roles. This panel presents four studies that show four different approaches to analysing museum stores and the associated controversies.
This panel will include 4 presentations that critically interrogate the museum shop's history, purpose, functions, and impact from various perspectives. The papers envisioned for the panel are:

Jamie Larkin

University of Warwick

Museum Merchandizing: A Commercial History

This paper will critically explore the commercialisation of museums in the UK from a historical perspective. In doing so, it examines both the societal developments and government policies that have created a visitor and business model in which commercial entities often sit uneasily at the heart of non-profit educational institutions. Ultimately, the paper teases out the key components of this uneasy relationship and assesses how this interplay of culture and commerce has developed over time to create a unique kind of merchandising.

Trilce Navarrete and Bartosz Jusypenko

Erasmus University of Rotterdam

Online shop curation and consumer preference.

This paper will first analyse the preference of online consumers of museum shops based on the information available about the product, based on an online survey distributed in the Netherlands, Spain, and Poland. Results are part of RECHARGE, a Horizon project about participatory business models.

Julio González-Liendo and Betsabé Arjona Blanco

Polytechnic University of Valencia

Museum shops as an enhancer of local development. An approach from the case of the Madrid Art Triangle

This paper presents an approach to the products sold by the museum stores of the Art Triangle of Madrid (El Prado National Museum, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza), which leads the annual visitors in the country to understand how they drive local development, through the purchase and promotion of artisans and small businesses in the Spanish capital.

Trilce Navarrete and Tatiana Cuevas Guevara

Erasmus University Rotterdam & Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil

Curating beyond the exhibition: the museum shop as curated museum space of interaction with the public.

This paper presents the case of the Mexican museum whereby exhibitions are planned in collaboration between the curator, a local artist, and a publisher. Together, they design objects for the museum shop, which enables visitors to take the exhibition to their homes conceptually.

Author bio

Trilce Navarrete is Assistant Professor of Digital Cultural Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She currently leads RECHARGE, a Horizon project about participatory business models, and interim manager at the EIT Culture&Creativity, tasks with developing the strategy to catalyse communities. Navarrete is part of the ACEI board.

Jamie Larkin is Assistant Professor of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at the University of Warwick. His research examines the intersection between museums, commerce, and sustainability. He co-edits the journal Museums and Social Issues.

Tatiana Cuevas Guevara is Director of the Carrillo Gil Art Museum in Mexico City, where he leads the institution's sustainable development and exhibition policies

Betsabé Arjona Blanco has a Communication and Cultural Industries doctorate from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and is director of innovation projects at Cámara Valencia, Spain.

Julio González-Liendo is Research Technician at the Institute of Design and Manufacturing of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, where he is carrying out studies on the development of a sustainability chair in schools of mass communication, as well as advancing his doctoral thesis on Sustainability for art museums in Spain. He is a Visiting Researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he conducts research on museum shops.

Bartosz Jusypenko is Research Assistant at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw and a PhD student in the Quantitative Psychology and Economics program at the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School, University of Warsaw. He is a Visiting Researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, participating in the project funded by the EU’s HORIZON Europe program.

Managing the Monographic Art Museum: A Multiple Case Study

Key words: museum management; monographic museum; museum stakeholders; museum governance; museum digital presence

Issue and Argument

Among the museums dedicated to the visual arts, the monographic museum stands out because of its singular focus on a particular artist’s work; however, in the museum management literature we find very little empirical research focusing on this type of cultural organizations. The objective of this study is to address this gap by comparing the managerial practices of four monographic museums within the Portuguese contemporary arts panorama and how these museums fulfil their mission and respond to challenges in their environments. More specifically, the study compares the mission, governance models, resource availability and utilization, funding and revenue models of the museums, identifies key stakeholders along with their expectations, contributions and influence, evaluates the museums’ digital presence as part of their communication strategy, and ultimately formulates managerial recommendations.
Our approach uses as a starting point the work of Camarero and Garrido (2009), who posit that nonprofit museums have three strategic orientations: custodial (custody, preservation, and education); sales (attracting visitors and generating revenue); customer (visitor satisfaction). All organizations need resources to fulfil their mission and in the case of monographic museums we consider that they essentially possess valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable resources (Barney, 1991) primarily in the form of artworks. Recent research has shown that there is a positive relationship between museum autonomy (and consequently its governance model) and performance that corresponds to “exhibitions, attendance, publications and technical efficiency” (Plaček et al., 2021, p. 504). In a nonprofit organization, the board of trustees is responsible for the governance which is essential for the organization’s success (Renz, 2016). Stakeholders (Freeman 1984; Stieb 2009; Mitchell et al., 1997), both internal (trustees, directors, employees, volunteers) and external (visitors, local community, sponsors, partners), play a determining role in the organization’s survival and success, and influence its finances (Lindqvist, 2012) and its governance (Mendoza et al., 2018). The digital presence of museums, and increasingly their presence on social media platforms, is a fundamental element of their communication strategy for attracting visitors (Amanatidis et al., 2020; Carignani et al., 2023).
Due to the fact that the operations of the monographic museum are centered around one artist and their work (or in one of our study´s subjects, a married couple of artists), the narrow scope of its activities may present specific challenges for the organization’s leadership in terms of exhibition renewal and programming innovation. Broadly speaking, a monographic museum has three objectives: preserve and exhibit a collection of works that are representative of the artist’s opus; research and document their work, and in some cases preserve the space(s) where the artist created their work; promote the work of the artist aiming towards a wider recognition and making it available to a broad audience, both physically and digitally.
For the purposes of this study, four monographic museums were selected that pursue the abovementioned objectives: Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, dedicated to the work of Paula Rego (1935-2022); Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar, dedicated to the work of Júlio Pomar (1926-2018); Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, dedicated to the work of the artistic couple of Arpad Szenes (1897-1985) and Maria Helena Viera da Silva (1908-1992); Fundação Manuel Cargaleiro, dedicated to the work of Manuel Cargaleiro (b. 1927). All four museums have been operating for more than a decade and are dedicated to artists that enjoy a solid artistic reputation both nationally and internationally. What is also common among these museums is their dependence upon government grants and subsidies at the central or local authority level.
References
Amanatidis, D., I. Mylona, S. Mamalis, and I. E. Kamenidou. 2020. Social Media for Cultural Communication: A Critical Investigation of Museums’ Instagram Practices. Journal of Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing, 6(2): 38–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3836638
Barney, J. 1991. Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management. 17(1): 99-120. doi:10.1177/014920639101700108
Bowen, G. A. 2009. Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method. Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27-40. DOI 10.3316/QRJ0902027.
Braun, V., and Clarke, V. 2006. Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, 77-101.
Brinkmann, S., and Kvale, S. 2015. Interviews (3rd Edition). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Camarero, C., and Garrido, M. J. 2009. Improving museums’ performance through custodial, sales, and customer orientations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38(5), 846-868.
Carignani, F., Iodice, G., & Bifulco, F. 2023. TikTok in museum management: an effective museum enhancement tool? Museum Management and Curatorship, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2023.2269123
Eisenhardt, K. M. 1989. Building theories from case study research. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–550. https://doi.org/10.2307/258557
Freeman, E. 1984. Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman.
Gummesson, E. 2017. Case Theory in Business and Management: Reinventing Case Study Research. Sage Publications.
Jung, Y. 2022. Transforming Museum Management: Evidence-Based Change through Open Systems Theory. London: Routledge
Lindqvist, K. 2012. Museum finances: challenges beyond economic crises. Museum Management and Curatorship, 27:1, 1-15, DOI:10.1080/09647775.2012.644693
Mendoza, H. M., Talavera, A. S., & León, C. J. 2018. The Role of Stakeholder Involvement in the Governance of Tourist Museums: Evidence of Management Models in the Canary Islands. Heritage & Society, 11(3), 229-248, DOI:10.1080/2159032X.2019.1693862
Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853-886.
Plaček, M., Ochrana, F., Půček, M., Nemec, J., Křápek, M., & del Campo, C. 2021. Autonomy and performance of local museums: the case of Czech Republic. Museum Management and Curatorship, 36(5), 504-522, DOI:10.1080/09647775.2020.1803112
Renz, D. O. 2016. Leadership, Governance, and the Work of the Board. In D. O. Renz and R. D. Herman (eds), The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. Hoboken: Wiley Online Library.
Stake, R. E. 2005. Qualitative Case Studies, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Stieb, J. 2009. Assessing Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory. Journal of Business Ethics 87(3), 401-414.
Yin, R. K. 2018. Case Study Research and Applications. California: Sage.
Methodology
This paper employs the multiple case study methodology (Eisenhardt, 1989; Gummesson, 2017; Yin, 2018; Stake, 2005) using four monographic museums as subjects. The case studies are qualitative (Stake, 2005), the level of analysis is the organization (museum), and the sampling method is purposeful. Considering that museums operate according to the open systems theory, which is how “an organization influences its environment by interacting with it, while the environment influences the organization’s internal systems” (Jung, 2022, p. 18), conducting multiple case studies will allow for a better understanding of these mutual influences leading to the managerial decisions undertaken by the leadership of the organizations under study. The data collection methods include semi-structured interviews (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2015) and document analysis (Bowen, 2009). The interviewees include the key decision makers of each museum: (a) the artistic director or chief curator, who are responsible for the programming; (b) the chairman of the board or the executive director that are responsible for business/financial and funding issues. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) will be used as a data reduction method for the interview transcripts. Documents include annual reports, museum publications, website content, and social media content. Additional data (e.g., breakdown of admission figures, number of works on display/storage/loan) may be requested for deepening the analysis of resource availability and utilization. On-site visits to all museums will be carried out for familiarizing the researcher with the resources (facilities infrastructure and artwork) and the internal context of the organizations under study.

Takeaway and Results
All cultural organizations, and especially small monographic museums, face numerous challenges resulting from changing public cultural policies, economic conditions, shifting changes of taste and preference regarding leisure activities, and global health conditions (recent Covid-19 pandemic). This study aims to offer insights to various key issues in museum management (governance, funding and revenue, stakeholder engagement, and communication strategies) and enrich academic research agendas by providing ideas for future research. It also has managerial implications for museum managers and offers recommendations towards better management practices for responding to current and future challenges. Currently, our preliminary results indicate that the digital presence of the museums can be further improved by being more active on social media and sharing more content and posting more frequently, while at the same time enhancing their websites in two directions: more information on the artist and their work (biography, exhibition history, images of work, etc.); online museum shop for increased revenue (publications, souvenirs, etc.). The operations of the four museums under study heavily rely on state or municipal support, which is dependent upon political decision-making regarding cultural policies and funding for arts organizations, as well as, the prevailing macroeconomic conditions. Museum leadership must become more proactive, and given the underlying bylaws and governance model, pursue sponsorships through fundraising actions and forge partnerships and alliances with external stakeholders that will be conducive to reaching the museum’s objectives.