Met Museum to Open Store in Costa Mesa Mall

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is coming to the Southland--sort of.

The world-renowned museum said Tuesday that it would open its first retail store on the West Coast this fall at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

The store will offer the museum’s extensive selection of reproductions of original works, as well as sell art books, prints, posters, sculptures, porcelain, crystal and other artistic items.

“It’s not East Coast culture we represent, it’s the culture of the world,” said Pat Brugger, manager of store planning for the museum, explaining why the Met was opening an outlet in Orange County.

She noted that the museum has more than 2 million works of art, spanning more than 5,000 years from prehistory to the present and representing the achievements of every major civilization.

Jim Henwood, manager of South Coast Plaza, said attracting the Met was a coup. “Bringing one of the greatest art museums in the world to South Coast Plaza is a natural extension of our ongoing campaign of always seeking the best,” he said.

Attracting upscale retailers is part of a long-range plan announced in February to renovate the 23-year-old regional mall, the biggest in terms of sales in the West. By year end, more than 50 new stores will have opened or been renovated at South Coast Plaza, Henwood said.

The Met has three stores in Manhattan and plans to open a fourth in the fall, Brugger said. Beginning in 1987, it branched out from its New York base, opening retail stores in Stamford and Hartford, Conn.; Short Hills, N.J., and Columbus, Ohio.

Brugger said the response to the retail stores has been good. “Once we moved from the museum, whether it be Columbus, Ohio, or Connecticut, the logistics were the same,” she said.

She said the museum has numerous members in Southern California who receive the gift catalogue that is sent out several times a year. She said the retail store will carry essentially the same items featured in the catalogue.

Brugger said the store will carry commemorative posters of the New York exhibits. In addition to reproductions of original works, it will sell silver, jewelry, scarves, ties, shawls, umbrellas, needlework, greeting cards, videocassettes and children’s toys and books.

Some of the items are unusual.

One of the most popular pieces, Brugger said, is a pair of earrings modeled on the painting “Venus Before the Mirror” by Peter Paul Rubens. Venus is pictured adjusting a white pearl earring in the mirror, which reflects it as a smoky color. Brugger said customers can purchase one white and one smoky earring, reminiscent of the painting.

Another example is the glasswares and decanters that are made using 19th-Century techniques to imitate the American baroque revival style. The style is attributed to the Boston & Sandwich Glass Co. of New England, which made the items from 1820 to 1840.

All revenue from the stores support the museum itself and its public exhibitions, Brugger said.

The museum store will lease 3,300 square feet of space on first level between Jewel and Carousel courts, Plaza officials said, between the Back Bay Rowing Co. and Bally of Switzerland. It will replace Company’s Coming, a family-run china, porcelain and crystal shop that is going out of business, Henwood said.

South Coast Plaza currently includes the Circle Gallery, Upstairs Gallery, the Works Gallery South and the Laguna Art Museum Satellite at South Coast Plaza, a gallery space and museum store. It also holds the Rizzoli International Bookstore & Gallery, which sells museum-quality art books.