Unique Last Minute Gifts for Kids from Museum Stores
Still looking for a great holiday gift for a special child? Want to find something out of the ordinary, with perhaps a touch of artiness? Look no further than your local museum store! Here in the Bay Area, we have a number of fine cultural institutions that not only can help enrich our lives with art, history, and science, but provide for great shopping as well. Museum stores carry great gift items for both children and adults that often are exclusive to the stores or inspired by and related to the museum's focus and collections.
Don't have time for a day at the museum? Don't fret—most of the time, you can shop at a museum store without having to pay museum admission. Better still, if you're a member of the museum, you usually receive a discount on your store purchases. Here are a few of our favorite local museum stores:
The Bay Area Discovery Museum's Discovery Store is a mandatory stop for us on any visit to the museum. Located in their Entry Pavilion, the Discovery Store is filled with great educational toys, games, and books, activity sets, art supplies, musical instruments, and more. Many of the items are related to the science and nature exhibits at the Discovery Museum. Products include Brio and Thomas the Tank Engine wooden railways, Folkmanis puppets, Melissa and Doug, and other well known high quality manufacturers. For inspiration, you can visit their website and browse a selection of their staff's top toy picks.
They're open Tuesdays from 11 am to 4 pm, Wednesday through Friday from 10 am to 4 pm, and weekends from 10 am to 5 pm. If you just want to shop and not visit the museum exhibits, just let them know at the front desk and they'll let you in to visit the store. Museum members receive 15% off their purchases. Call them for more information: (415) 339-3939, or visit www.badm.org.
The de Young Museum's Museum Store offers a great selection of art inspired children's toys, furniture, gifts, books, and videos. There's an emphasis on sustainable and environmentally friendly products, too. Some of our favorite toys include the knit stuffed farm animals made out of recycled sweaters by Pear Tree Studios (pictured, $12 to $56, and made in the USA!), the recycled plastic play sets—a 17-piece tea set ($25), a sand play set for the beach ($25), and an indoor gardening set complete with soil and organic seeds ($35)—made by Green Toys right here in the Bay Area, and the fair-trade puppets from Marin company Yellow Label Kids. We're also big fans of the games and activity sets by Eeboo and Mudpuppy, which you can find here in abundance. The book selection is fantastic, too, with selections for babies and toddlers right through to "serious" art books for older kids.
You don't have to pay museum admission to shop at the de Young Museum Store; in fact you can visit a large part of the museum, including the store, cafe, and tower observation deck, for free. The children's section is on the lower level of the museum. Members receive 10% off their store purchases (excluding sale merchandise). They're open Tuesday through Sunday, 9:30 am to 5 pm. The museum and the store will close early at 4 pm on Christmas Eve. Visit them and shop online at www.famsf.org/store. Phone: (415) 750.3642
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is well known in the Bay Area for their superb MuseumStore. Located on Third Street (between Mission and Howard), you can actually enter the store off the street without even going into the museum. Highlights of the great art inspired toys, books, and decor for kids include the cool Roomies dolls by Danish designers Christine Scharzer and Anne Birgitte Balle (on sale for $4.98!), the LEGO-like Stack & Snack utensil set ($20, and not just for kids!), and the Picture Me Baby Growth Chart ($10), where you can accompany each growth milestone with a picture of your child. And of course, who can pass up the cool Sushi Bib ($20)?
SFMOMA Members get a 10% discount. The SFMOMA MuseumStore is open Monday through Wednesday, 10 am to 6:30 pm, Thursday, 10 am to 9:30 pm, and Friday through Sunday 10 am to 5:45 pm. They'll be closing early at 4 pm on Christmas Eve. They also have a branch at SFO's International Terminal, so if you're heading out or coming home and need to pick up a gift, check them out (open daily, 9 am to 6 pm). More information at sfmoma.stores.yahoo.net or (415) 357-4035.
Obviously, there are still more Bay Area museum stores that we haven't mentioned here. If you'd like to share your own favorite, please leave a comment.
