Starry Starry Night Lights

The “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs” exhibit gift shop, at LACMA through May 16, might well be renamed “Vincent to Go,” as museum visitors torture themselves on what Vincentiana merchandise to buy. The array is as dizzying to shoppers as the high noon light of Provence was to the artist. One painting alone, “The Bedroom,” is sliced and diced into postcards, ceramic tiles, coffee mugs, notebooks, note cards, mouse pads, address books, diaries, photo albums, paperweights, key chains, T-shirts, puzzles (travel, 500 piece jigsaw or mini, to put together while waiting in the check-out line), kids’ coloring posters, refrigerator magnets and gift bags. It’s also one of four rooms in “Van Gogh’s House: A Pop-Up Experience,” and part of “Vincent’s Time Path,” a board game promising fun as you “walk the path Vincent lived” (and you thought it was all madness, missing ears and final gunshots!). Don’t forget the $59 wristwatch to tell when it’s time to leave “The Bedroom” and get painting.

A display dummy decked out in self-portrait baseball cap, signature backpack, tote bag and umbrella sits in a beach chair to demonstrate the full Vincent lifestyle. Don’t take off for Arles, though, without a Vincent sketchbook and pencil box, some “Letters to Theo” stationery and a self-portrait stamp. Thirsty? “Glass of Absinthe and a Carafe” has been reborn as a boxed gift set of two glasses and a carafe. Absinthe, however, remains outlawed.

A tag attached to the $39, 100% silk “Cafe Therese” necktie claims that the artist’s last words included the phrase: “What’s the use?” Today’s geniuses of museum merchandising have delivered the answer at last: Everything, Vincent. Everything.