Curatorial Ambition

Any travel plans I've made have always prioritized museum visits over most other things. I love museums, and I really love museum shops. They are a particularly fascinating brand of retail space, and I've always harboured a desire to curate such a space. I suppose choosing the stock for any sort of shop is curatorial in its own way and, in the case of Posie Row, the museum-love sneaks in in certain items...more on that in a minute.

On a visit to NYC last year, I was deeply enamoured with the MoMA design store. Such clever items! So beautifully presented! Despite limited suitcase space, I came home with a bunch of goodies, including New York City in a Bag- imagine that! I also really appreciated the attention to designers and design years- this acknowledgement of context makes things seem so much more special (or perhaps I get this from my dad, for whom the Oracle Delphi MKII turntable is as much a work of sculptural art as a Degas dancer. He often laments that the designers of electronic gadgets are rarely publicly credited, and wonders why Sony Walkman inventor Nobutoshi Kihara isn't as big a celebrity as Brad Pitt :)).

Anywho...here is something museum-style carried by Posie Row. It's called an Art Cube, and it's such a neatly compact little item that it often gets overlooked. You can watch a video of one being played with here, though the video doesn't do total justice to the coolness or design variety of this item. We have them in designs ranging from Gustav Klimt's paintings to Monet's Waterlilies to the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. The fun of this item exists in the variety of surfaces that can be revealed as you play- apparently there are more than six sides to a cube! Who knew!