Shops have become an essential extension to the visitor experience of a museum or exhibition. The Rmn Grand Palais continues to anticipate and follow these developments by offering a host of original products, from souvenirs to cultural objects and taking in creations by young French artists as well as collaboration with renowned brands. It distributes its products and those of other publishers in the 34 bookstores and shops it manages at the Grand Palais and the Musée du Luxembourg, French and foreign museums and through its online shop: boutiquesdemusees.fr as well as through its network of resellers which enables the products to be distributed outside the traditional culture sites, thus helping the museums reach out beyond their walls.
A YEAR OF ADAPTATION
The closure of the museums from 14 March led to a complete shutdown of the shops until 5 July. From 6 July, museum shops reopened under a very strict health protocol that also imposed restrictions as to the number of visitors at a time. All shopping areas had to adapt their layouts and integrate safety systems as elegantly as possible, including protective walls at the checkouts.
The entire protocol was put in place by monitoring com- pliance with visitor number restrictions, establishing one- way traffic pathways through the shops and distributing disinfectant gel at the entrance. This period also saw a change in the types of visitors in the museums and shops. International tourist traffic plunged, affecting the largest cultural establishments such as the Louvre or the Palace of Versailles. At the Louvre Museum, for example, almost 84% of vis- itors were French. In order to cope with this change, the offers within the different outlets were adapted, in particular to give a stronger presence to editorial products as well as those intended for young people.
MAJOR CONTRACTS WON
The end of 2020 was particularly rich. On 15 December, the French Constitutional Council opened a shop in the Cour d Honneur of the Palais-Royal, at 24 Galerie de Chartres, the running of which has been entrusted to the Rmn - Grand Palais. The Musée National Picasso-Paris also showed proof of its trust in the Rmn - Grand Palais by renewing its concession for the shop located at the entrance to the museum. Finally, the Pompidou Centre attributed the contract to run its three bookstores to the Rmn - Grand Palais, thus boosting its shopping facilities.
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