A week ago, I entered the grand marble foyer of the American Museum of Natural History again to explore what remained unfinished of my last visit. But, being inside the museum was like riding a bike, in that my body instinctively remembered where it wanted to go. And where it wanted to go, among other places, was straight to the gift shop.

It’s not just the Met shop or the MOMA Design Store that scratch the itch for me, as impeccably curated as those stores are. In fact, the more obscure or hyper-focused a museum, space, or the experience is, the more fun its gift shop tends to be.

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I find myself having a consumerist strain of Stendhal syndrome at these shops. (Spend-all syndrome?) It has something to do with the fact that almost all of the items are appealing, and none are even close to necessary. After the better part of two years of shopping very little IRL, the stagy superfluousness of the NYBG shop jolted me right back into a state of pure purchasing pleasure.

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Take me to the American Museum of Natural History, with its scented mineral stone-like soaps, dinosaur puzzles, and all things dinosaur, and New York embroidered cushion covers. Take me to the Van Gogh Experience, with its Starry night painted t-shirts, scarves, and tote bags. Take me to the Chihuly Glass Garden, Seattle with its miniature fabricated glass sculptures, knitted hats, and books about the life of the artist Dale Chihuly. Take me to the New York Botanical Garden, with its array of plants, books on gardening and forests of the world, and even some interior home décor. Although each shop shares its sensibility—and its profits—with the larger institution it is attached to, many of the smaller and funkier museum shops stuff their shelves with eccentric trinkets that echo the museum’s aesthetic more in spirit than in substance. 

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While it is also interesting to look into the luxury evolution of these museum gift shops. The museum retail industry’s beginnings were humble. The first wave of museum shops dates back to the late 1800s when visitors could occasionally find a box kept under the information desk with cheap reproductions. In rarer cases, there might even be a small sales counter with some custom items. The highly curated, labyrinthine museum shops that we know today didn’t become commonplace until the early 1980s.

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A good museum shop feels like a cross between a local flea market, a midnight spin through Etsy, a mall novelty kiosk, a corner bookseller, and a lucid dream. This gift guide is perhaps not too useful, but you can think of it as a springboard to shopping for yourself and others in the years to come. A note: most great museum shops are now fully online but hunting in person is double the fun. 

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Exiting through the gift shop has become an expected (and, for many, unmissable) part of the museum experience. It is also the grand finale, the final exhibit of the show. Museum shops are no longer just about selling things — they are about adding a new step to the museum experience.