At Museum Shops, Melding of Culture and Commerce

Here’s an idea for improving your life worthy of Oprah’s magazine--find ways to make the things you have to do fun to do.

This was brought to mind by a recent trip to a Valley mall, which, in this season before Hanukkah and Christmas, has begun to resemble Hieronymus Bosch’s vision of hell.

There you are, shackled to your endless list of gifts that need buying, and there’s no place to park, the clerks are overburdened--if not surly--and the lines at the cash registers rival those at the bank.

To avoid this ordeal, you could do what a friend of mine does and retreat each year to China until the last pine needle has dropped and it’s safe to come home. Or you could take your list and do your holiday shopping at one of the many museum shops in or near the Valley.

To sugarcoat the experience even more, forget that gift buying is an onerous obligation and think of it as just one more aspect of a pleasurable museum outing. You might even take in some of the first-rate exhibits currently on view.

That’s what Shirley Butler of Toluca Lake did recently. She was browsing in Audrey’s, the shop at the Skirball Cultural Center in Sepulveda Pass. She had come to the complex to arrange a business meeting but headed to the museum store because she knows it stocks items relevant to the Jewish American experience, the museum’s organizing theme.

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The shop was all but empty shortly after its noontime opening, and Butler was able to find a stack of Hanukkah presents for her two nieces. But even after 20 minutes of looking at toys, puzzles, tapes, kits, books and a Rugrats menorah, she was at a loss as to what to get for her young nephew. “He’s the difficult one,” she said.

Had Butler’s nephew been a collector of Judaic holiday stuff, she would have had it made. According to store manager Susan Roberson, the shop attracts collectors from all over the world who come to Audrey’s for items related to Jewish holidays and rituals. Unusual dreidels are especially popular, she says.

A dreidel is a Hanukkah toy, a top with four Hebrew letters on it. In times of persecution, it is said to have been a way to study Hebrew behind the backs of the persecutors. You can also gamble with it for your siblings’ chocolate Hanukkah gelt.

Frankly, while it is mildly amusing to spin, a dreidel is no Sony PlayStation. But large numbers of grown-ups apparently remember the dreidels of yesteryear with enormous affection and doggedly seek new sources for them, especially the offbeat ones. Audrey’s has dreidels that have the millefleurs look of Murano glass and high-tech models made of titanium. The shop also stocks a few stratospherically high-end dreidels like artist Richard Biterman’s, including one selling for $960.

Roberson insists that the artist doesn’t want his handsome dreidel to sit idle in a display case: “He always says, ‘You don’t just look at it, you play with it.’ ”

Ten minutes from the Skirball is the Getty Center and its store--or at least the Getty parking structure. The Getty shop is really a bookstore, one with hundreds of art and other books, with a relatively small selection of additional merchandise. Since the Getty is the one Los Angeles institution that non-Angelenos are currently most curious about, it is a good place to shop for people who would love to have some tchotchke with a Getty connection.

Probably to accommodate kids eager for a souvenir, the shop carries lots of small, inexpensive items that feature an image of the tram that takes visitors from the parking structure below to the galleries at the top of the hill. The trams are actually whiter than Ricky Martin’s teeth, but the people movers on these patches, magnets, key chains, coin purses and backpacks are all the colors of the kindergarten palette.

One nifty little stocking stuffer is a pop-up card featuring the replica Roman villa that houses the original Getty museum in Malibu (there is one of the hilltop complex as well). I can’t imagine who would want one, but you can also buy a 2- by 2-inch or 4- by 4-inch square of the very travertine stone that covers much of the museum and the surrounding plaza.

Two shows at the Getty seem especially resonant for the season. Up through Jan. 7, “Raphael and His Circle: Drawings From Windsor Castle” is a rare opportunity to see ageless works on paper by this Renaissance giant.

Another small, worthy show, called “The Art of Giving in the Middle Ages,” draws on the exquisite books and manuscripts in the Getty collection to illustrate the themes of charity and gift giving.

Included is a 13th century portrait in miniature of the original givers of Christmas presents, the three Magi who brought exotic gifts to the Christ child. (Would it be churlish to note that the three kings only had one name on their list?)

According to Thom Kren, the Getty’s curator of manuscripts, images of the gift-bearing Magi served to encourage donations to the medieval church. For much of the Middle Ages, the exchange of gifts was a critical element of social and political life, and things of value other than money were the medium of exchange.

“Money doesn’t even begin to become important until after the year 1000,” Kren explains. Lavish, costly books like those in the show (which continues through Feb. 4) were popular gifts among the wealthy few. “Book giving, even today, remains a favorite cultural activity,” Kren points out.

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The Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Griffith Park has a shop full of western books and kitsch. New this season is a large Gene Autry wall hanging, or throw, for the hard-core fan of the singing cowboy whose hits included “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Because of the Autry’s popular “On Gold Mountain: A Chinese-American Experience” exhibit, the shop is also well-stocked with books on feng shui, Asian-style tea pots and the Chinese-themed mystery novels of writer Lisa See, the show’s curator. The shop also has a large selection of fanciful carved animals from Oaxaca, Mexico.

There’s still time to see the Gold Mountain exhibit, which ends Jan. 1 and will travel to the Smithsonian next year. A show of Native American jewelry, including turquoise-and-silver pieces to die for, continues until Jan. 21. Like most museum shops, the Autry’s gives members a 10% discount.

All three institutions belong to the Museum Store Assn., a 1,900-member trade organization based in Denver. Nora Weiser, assistant director of the group, says the association encourages all member shops to stock goods that relate to the mission of their museum. Its code of ethics also encourages such responsible practices as clearly labeling any replicas or reproductions “so that down the road somebody doesn’t have a little Mona Lisa poster they think is the real thing.”

Museums like their shops because they contribute to the institutions’ precious “revenue stream,” Weiser says, and so do patrons. “The store has become part of the experience of going to the museum,” she says.

Weiser herself goes to museum shops in search of unique items and because she likes the uplifting feeling that comes from supporting an institution she believes in. That, and she’s a sucker for gorgeous stationery (the shop at the Huntington is a great place for that).

“I have a friend,” she says, “who always goes for the jewelry.”

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Spotlight runs every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.