Like most soon-to-be finalists, I spent the majority of my summer vacation after second year researching and preparing for my dissertation. But in the face of blistering British heat, and seduced by the temptation to soak up the opportunity to do very little, extensive research proved, under no uncertain terms, to be mildly challenging. However, what eventually incentivised me to put pen to paper was the excitement of seeing the objects of my study in person, at the British Museum. But, once I had made the very long and arduous journey from my middle-of-nowhere hometown to London, it wasn’t necessarily the museum that I ended up being desperate to see before anything else. Quite shamefully, it was the gift shop.
Bathed in sunlight under the sweeping glass ceiling, the museum’s gift shop was almost an exhibition in itself: it was the epicentre of buzzing activity, sprawled across the vast expanse of the circular Great Court. At the British Museum, the gift shop was not simply a means of exit, snagging your attention as you dragged your tired feet. It was as carefully organised, and as thoughtfully curated as the museum’s galleries.
But there was something that tugged at my undulating admiration of the sea of souvenirs and replicas dotted across the shop. Maybe it was in the way an artefact as revolutionary and monumental as the Rosetta Stone was now available as a mass-produced box of bite-sized chocolates. Or perhaps it was the amusement at what appeared to be a Roman soldier, equipped with a shield and spear, but now reincarnated as a collectable rubber duck. But such gimmicks certainly aren’t unique to the British Museum. Up and down the country, and across the world, there will be something in a museum gift shop that is so bizarre, and so far removed from its historical context, that it will make you pause and raise an eyebrow.
The bemused scepticism towards what might be for sale in a museum gift shop isn’t, of course, a revelation. Each time I’ve found myself meandering through a gift shop, there is a quote that perches front row in my mind, one that guides my hand as I sift through the colourful displays, and squints disdainfully as I choose something to add to my ever-growing collection of miscellanea:
“Endless processions of people in graceless clothing file through these palaces, staring at the gold cups and the silver bowls, which are not even used any more. Then they go to a sort of market inside the palace and buy pictures of these things, or miniature versions of them that are not real silver and gold. That is why I say trash.”
Margaret Atwood, in The Penelopiad, puts these words in the mouth of Penelope, as she talks to the reader from the Underworld and reflects on the events of her life, as described in Homer’s Odyssey. In this particular quote, Penelope is perplexed by the farce of modern museums: we are the “people in graceless clothing”, museum gift shops are the “market inside the palace”, and the historically-inspired souvenirs and knickknacks for sale are the “trash”. The disdain towards this particular niche in the consumer market is palpable – to Penelope, we are philistines fumbling through the materiality of the past, and certainly not ‘connoisseurs’ of history.
Many people will doubtless share Penelope’s criticisms, because there absolutely is something ever-so-slightly absurd about a Roman-duck hybrid, and its relevance to wider cultural history is questionable. Should this be perceived as reducing the achievements and culture of entire civilisations to mere merchandise? By their very nature, museums are institutions that are dedicated to preserving the often priceless, and typically one-of-a-kind, archaeological remnants of the past. There is a certain irony to all of this: these priceless objects, which thousands will flock to admire and observe every year, are replicated, mass-produced, packed in storage containers, stocked on shelves, and slapped with a price tag rounded to the penny.
Yet as someone whose desk is littered with ceramic miniatures – the Colosseum, an assortment of Greek vases, the Parthenon, you name it – and has carried a Roman coin replica on a keychain for years, this disparity has always felt difficult to reconcile. But now, having visited many gift shops, it seems this very contradiction is also its greatest strength. For many, an interest in history is limited to the words of scholars on a page and an artefact sealed carefully behind glass panes. Replicas and souvenirs offer access to history in ways the original objects cannot.
At Oxford, I am in the unique and privileged position to be able to handle ancient artefacts as frequently as I write essays about them. For most, opportunities to tangibly interact with history, whether by handling an ancient vase or tracing the outline of a mosaic, are few and far between. The physicality of history has been an enduring passion of mine, so although I appreciate that reproductions and replicas cannot replace originals, what’s inside a museum gift shop can sometimes offer something just as unique: history that can be carried home, where its provenance can become intimately intertwined with an identity and heritage of your own.
It is perhaps for this reason that museum gift shops have remained so steadfastly popular. The innate human desire to connect with the past and make sense of what came before is inextinguishable. So whilst there still might be an element of ridiculousness to the shelves of mass-produced plush scarab beetles, if museums are there to make history accessible, perhaps the gift shops are merely an extension of such a purpose.
