Although I did not see the gift shop at Musée de l’Orangerie, I visited the gift shop in the Picasso Museum and the Musée d’Orsay. During these visits, I noticed the commodification of artwork (it’s hard not to). The Musée d’Orsay gift shop had a Rubik’s cube with Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhône, which I found to be amusingly dumb and ethically concerning, as it is simply exploiting Van Gogh’s work. In contrast, I think that art prints in both the museums’ gift shops are ethically created, as they are simply made for visitors to take their favorite pieces home with them and continue to enjoy their beauty. I also noticed that at the Louvre, directly outside of the room housing the Mona Lisa, there was a gift shop dedicated to the painting with her face on just about any object it could fit on. I wondered how Leonardo da Vinci would react to seeing that, or how the woman in the painting would. I can’t imagine da Vinci would be very pleased.
