You know the one. They read every wall label, including the small one about the donor, and their idea of a good day off is a museum with a decent café. Ask what they want and they will mention a show that closes next month.
Museum shops are the natural place to buy for them. The books are chosen by people who work in museums, the keepsakes come from the building or the collection itself, and the money goes back to the places they love.
We picked 15 from 8 museum shops, across art, natural history, science and design. They are grouped by the kind of museum person you are buying for, ending with a section for the one who already owns several tote bags and would like another.
Books first, because this person will actually read them: two classics, a guide that questions the rules, and a book of stories from inside museums.
E. H. Gombrich's The Story of Art, first published in 1950 and a standard introduction ever since. This is Phaidon's pocket softcover, about 7.7 by 4.8 inches, with a new cover and a new preface by the author's granddaughter, Leonie. It is also 1.6 inches thick, so pocket is a relative term.
A 160-page softcover that asks which bits of museum etiquette are worth keeping and which are not. This expanded edition adds guidance on the male gaze, fossil-fuel sponsors and the thin diversity of many gallery walls, plus some help with what to think in front of a work labeled Untitled, 1973.
Phaidon's The Art Museum is laid out like an ideal museum on paper: galleries by culture and period, rooms on movements, corridors of large reproductions, and a short curator's label for every work. The Brooklyn Museum's listing is the 992-page hardback, about 13 by 17 inches. Lovely, and very heavy.
The New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein collected stories and odd moments from curators, museum staff and visitors, and drew them. The publisher calls it a love letter to museums and museum-goers. A good gift for someone who will recognize themselves in at least one of the visitors.
The Getty Conservation Institute publishes the books that conservators actually use. Two of them work as gifts for the curious.
Color Science and the Visual Arts, by Roy S. Berns, is subtitled A Guide for Conservators, Curators, and the Curious. A 264-page paperback with 325 color illustrations, covering why colors shift under different lights, how artworks are displayed, painting materials and color reproduction. Technical in places, but it explains with pictures.
The gift for someone who wonders what museums do about bugs. A 150-page paperback from 1998 by Charles Selwitz and Shin Maekawa on treating insect-infested objects with oxygen-poor atmospheres of nitrogen or argon, or with high levels of carbon dioxide. The Getty also offers it as a free PDF, so the printed copy is the gesture.
Douglas Preston's history of the American Museum of Natural History: the expeditions, the discoveries and the scientists behind them. He wrote it after eight years working at the museum, ending as manager of publications. A 256-page paperback. He later co-wrote Relic, a thriller set in a New York natural history museum, so he clearly took notes.
A sterling silver key ring set with a slab of rock from the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, removed in 2018 for the American Museum of Natural History's Hall of Gems and Minerals. Under ultraviolet light, the fluorescent minerals in it glow. It comes in a gift box with a certificate of authenticity.
A 1922 poster for the Museum of Science in South Kensington, now the Science Museum, showing Robert Stephenson and his locomotive Rocket, winner of the Rainhill Trials in 1829. Printed to order in sizes from 35 by 28 to 100 by 75 cm, framed or not. Orders cannot be cancelled or returned, and the price is in pounds.
For some people the building is the main exhibit.
Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral on Fifth Avenue, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which opened in 1959, as a drawing on a 22 by 28 inch poster. The image itself is about 26 by 16 inches, with a margin around it. The frame is up to you.
An organic cotton T-shirt from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, printed with Ulrik Jantzen's 2015 black-and-white photograph of the Panorama Room in the South Wing, which looks out over the Øresund. Unisex sizes S to XXL, printed in Denmark, priced in Danish kroner. Only people who have been there will get it, which is the point.
Every museum lover has a drawer of these. One more will not hurt, as long as it comes from a museum they have not covered yet.
The front entrance of the Getty Center on a water-resistant polyester bag, about 19.7 by 16.5 inches, that folds into its own zippered pouch. The shop says it carries up to 44 pounds. It was made for the Getty Center's 25th anniversary in 2022, and it is the one in this section that fits in a pocket.
A black 10 oz. cotton canvas tote with the Cooper Hewitt logo in white, turned on its side. Pentagram designed the logo in 2012, set in the museum's own open-source typeface by Chester Jenkins. About 13 by 14 by 3 inches, cut, printed and stitched in New Hampshire. Wash cold and line dry.
A cotton tote developed from Edward Kemeys' Lion, one of the pair that has guarded the Art Institute of Chicago's Michigan Avenue entrance since 1894. At 16 by 26 by 5 inches it is a big bag, and the straps are cotton too. Hand wash cold, line dry.
The splurge in the tote drawer: a limited-edition collaboration between the American Museum of Natural History and J.Crew, in cotton canvas, about 14 by 20 inches. It has pockets inside and out, a key clip and a name tag, which helps when everyone at the museum is carrying a tote.
We read the public catalogs of the museum shops. Nobody paid to be on this list, and no brand sent us samples: we have not handled these items ourselves. Sizes and materials come from each shop's own product page, which is also where you buy.
Prices can change and items sell out. When a pick is no longer listed by its shop, it drops off this page.
Want more? Browse every museum tote bag on the site, or see all our gift guides.