Museum shops have a reputation for $300 scarves. They also sell some of the best small gifts anywhere, because someone with taste has already thrown out the junk.
We picked one thing under $25 from each of 13 museum shops on Gift Shop Atlas. The rule: wherever possible, choose something tied to that museum's own collection or building, the kind of thing you could not buy at the airport.
A word on cost. For the shops in Canada, Britain and Denmark we convert the price to US dollars, so the $25 line is approximate there. Shipping is extra and can cost more than the gift, so these work best added to a bigger order or sent within the shop's own country.
Chris Burden's Urban Light, the grid of restored street lamps outside LACMA, is one of the most photographed spots in Los Angeles. This 1.25-inch enamel pin shows one of its lamps, and the light glows in the dark.
A hand-cranked paper music box about two inches wide, decorated with a dragonfly, a pear and a carnation from the Mira calligraphiae monumenta, a sixteenth-century manuscript in the Getty's collection. It plays The Blue Danube.
Six sheets of 5 by 7 inch cotton paper that turn deep blue in sunlight. Lay a leaf, a key or a piece of lace on top, leave it in the sun, rinse with water, and you have a print. Both sides of each sheet can be used. Made in the USA.
Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy (1897), the lion and the sleeping musician under a full moon, as an acrylic fridge magnet. One of the best-loved paintings in MoMA's collection, and among the least expensive things in its store.
A Whitney exclusive: a slim 48-page notebook with graph paper, an elastic band, and Edward Hopper's Railroad Sunset (1929) across the cover. The Whitney holds more of Hopper's work than any other museum, so this is the right place to buy it. Made in Portugal.
Frank Lloyd Wright's building reduced to a gold outline on white enamel. For the person who liked the building more than the exhibition, which is a common and respectable position.
A cast pewter Tyrannosaurus, about 2.5 inches long, with a small museum logo charm. Solid metal where most souvenir keyrings are printed plastic, and the obvious choice from the museum with the famous dinosaur halls.
Francis L. V. Hoppin's rendering of the Brooklyn Museum as its architects, McKim, Mead & White, first imagined it. Only part of that plan was ever built. It comes in two sizes and is printed on demand, so it cannot be returned.
David Weeks's wooden robot for Areaware, in its smallest size: a 1.5-inch beech cube that unfolds into a figure about 4 inches tall, held together with elastic, and holds whatever pose you give it. A desk toy for adults and a real toy for children over three.
Georgia O'Keeffe's Sky Above Clouds IV (1965) is one of the largest paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, 24 feet wide. On socks it becomes rows of small white clouds on blue: recognisable to people who know the painting, simply nice socks to people who don't.
A six-inch plush Wendiceratops in a removable Royal Ontario Museum T-shirt. The real animal, a horned dinosaur that lived about 79 million years ago, was found in Alberta in 2010 by the fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda and carries her name.
A small plaster heart, about 7 cm across, decorated by hand with cut-up pages from old Louisiana exhibition catalogues, so no two are the same. It comes boxed, with a ribbon for hanging. A very Danish Christmas decoration from the museum on the coast north of Copenhagen.
Mallard is the locomotive that set the world speed record for steam in 1938 and still holds it. It lives at the National Railway Museum in York, part of the Science Museum Group. A mallard is also a duck. Hence this. The shop notes it cannot currently ship to Northern Ireland.
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. If a pick goes above $25 or is no longer listed by its shop, it drops off this page.
Want more? Browse every museum gift under $25, or raise the ceiling to under $50.