Arting and Shopping

Museum shops – I’m just wild about them. Not the big MFA and Met type stores though. Their wares are arsty sure BUT, generally, painfully sleek and sophisticated. A Van Gogh Iris necklace might well be the wildest thing amongst all the Tiffany and Monet scarves, glossy artist repros and art history tomes, mini Rodins and plum stationary. The smaller museums, the ones not on the high toned art-sophisticate-tour, have the most interesting stuff.

Fer instance, there's Iceland’s wee penis museum. To be clear, this is NOT an exhibit hall just for tiny todgers – though some most assuredly are – it's the museum that's small. This is a collection/a display of phallic specimens from all sorts of penis bearing mammals (detached from their owners). Yes, ouch. The actual name of the joint is The Icelandic Phallological Museum and they have a store where you can buy bottle openers, ball caps, designer condoms, Willy warmers and more.

The Boston ICA, while decidedly johnsonless, is also full of interesting stuff.

There’s the hot pink T with the repro of the late ‘80s Guerrilla Girls poster “The Advantages of Being A Woman Artist.” There are Amy Sillman vases, hedgehog trivets, the most adorable sake set and odd books.

One tempting bathroom read:

How to be Interesting (in 10 Simple Steps) by Jessica Hagy.

You want to leave a mark, not a blemish. Be a hero, not a spectator. You want to be interesting. (Who doesn’t?) But sometimes it takes a nudge, a wake-up call, an intervention!—and a little help. (source)

I thought this was gonna be an hilarious snark-fest but it’s not. It started out as a serious blogpost on Forbes which became massively popular. There are cute doodled charts and her ideas are generally solid – talk to strangers, go exploring, embrace your innate weirdness. Still, I think the blogpost, versus a whole book, was probably all that was needed.

Along that same line – a book comprised entirely of the same side view portrait of the same dude but in a zillion different color combos. I liked the painting style and the idea BUT thought it'd work better as a large painting a la Warhol's multi up portraits of Jagger or Monroe.

Another which, at first glance, I thought would be a funny take on pretentious gourmet cookery: Toast: The Cookbook. Nope. Interesting little recipes but trees needed to die for this? Unsurprisingly, I didn't dish out the cabbage for this one either.

Like so much conceptual art, these strike me as fun ideas with overkill, steroidal execution.

What'd I buy? Socks and a card. As much as I love, LOVE a lot of what I see in these museum shops, I don't need another mug, more tote bags, a copper headed mason jar cocktail shaker, not even an Endo vase or that sake set (that I can't stop thinking about). This isn't about me being all financially abstemious so much as it's about not crowding my house, my life with more stuff (pretty or amusing  as the stuff may well be).

The Amazing Bob's one big house rule was, you bring something in, something's gotta go out. My man was smart as ALL hell. Smarter!