It`s been a busy month for the Art Institute of Chicago, which opened two retail shops, at 900 N. Michigan Ave. and at Oakbrook Center.
The expansion was based on the public`s enthusiastic response to a temporary shop set up at ”the Bloomingdale`s mall” during Christmas. The
”Holiday Collection Shop” stayed open until Aug. 2, when it moved to new digs (and doubled its space) on the fifth floor.
As museum funding becomes scarcer, more of them are looking to their retail operations to help pick up the slack. (New York`s Metropolitan Museum of Art has six shops,including one in Los Angeles.)
Hot sellers for back to school include lunch boxes, mugs and shoulder bags-all scrawled with the names of artists-from, appropriately, the museum`s signature line.
