2010 MSA Conference Call for Presentations
from MSA
You are invited to share your professional knowledge at the 55th MSA Retail Conference and Expo in Austin, TX, April 17 – 19, 2010! If you are committed to improving our cultural commerce community by offering practical, solutions-based and innovative content that helps drive the bottom line, we want to hear from you! Get more information and complete the online call for presentations submission form. More

Get a Roadmap to Retail Success and Enter to Win a Garmin GPS
from MSA
How can you navigate the complex world of specialty retail and be sure your store is on the most successful path? To help chart your best course, MSA is conducting a comprehensive survey of nonprofit retail professionals to discover key financial, operations and salary benchmarks as well as marketing and growth strategies. Complete your 2009 MSA Retail Industry Survey by June 12, 2009, to be entered for a chance to win one of two free Garmin Nuvi 205 GPS units. Check your e-mail inbox for your personalized link to the survey. If you didn’t receive this e-mail, you can request an invitation. More

MSA Chapter Meeting Minutes Posted
from MSA
Minutes from MSA’s Midwest, North Atlantic, Southwest Central and Western Chapters’ spring meetings have been posted to MuseumStoreAssociation.org. Go to the chapter home page and select your chapter from the pull-down menu to read them. More

Seattle Arts Events are Big Draw for Big Spending Out-of-towners
from the Puget Sound Business Journal
In early August, nearly 3,000 people will line up outside McCaw Hall in Seattle to attend performances of Seattle Opera’s production of “The Ring.” The Richard Wagner spectacle includes four full-length shows presented over six nights. Many local arts patrons will be in the audience, but a surprising number of people who will see the shows do not live anywhere near Seattle, or even in the United States. More

Travelers Look Closer to Home
from St. Joe News
The American Automobile Association estimates that 27 million people will hit the roads during the Memorial Day weekend. The approaching summer vacation time holds local and national promise. More

Coping with Consumers' Newfound Frugality
from Advertising age
If today's frugality and shrinking markets are the new normal, are marketers ready for it? Consumers make up 70 percent of GDP, and that figure has contracted 5 percent since the start of the recession. Yet it's not the image in our rear view mirror that's worrisome; it's the prospect of permanent consumer retrenching. Wages and benefits accounted for percent of household income in the past, with the rest made up of other forms of income, and in particular rising asset values. But with wages frozen and asset values declining, is a smaller economy the new norm? More

Retail's Cuts Cushion a Fall
from The Boston Globe
Good news is hard to come by in the retail business. Or so you would think. Everyone knows how the battered consumer economy left retailers struggling desperately to adapt. Besides banks and financial service companies, you would be hard pressed to come up with another industry under so much business pressure. More

Museum Fees 'Could Make Comeback'
from BBC News
Free entrance to museums may become a thing of the past as the recession and funding cuts bite, according to the head of The Art Fund. David Barrie, said it would be "a disastrous backward step" if charges were reintroduced. Admissions are continuing to rise as visitors seek low cost attractions. A spokesman for the Department of Culture denied there were any plans to scrap free museum entrances. More

Study Calls Reusable Shopping Bags a Public Health Risk
from Calgary Herald
Reusable shopping bags may help save the environment but they pose a public health risk, suggests new research. The bags were found to contain unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mould and coliform counts, said the study, A Microbiological Study of Reusable Grocery Bags. Some bags contained fecal matter. “The main risk is food poisoning,” said Richard Summerbell, director of research at Sporometrics, a Toronto-based environmental microbiology laboratory, who evaluated the study results. The warm, dark, folded interiors of bags exposed to food and liquid spills are breeding grounds for bacteria, yeast, mould and coliforms and can be transferred from bag to bag by supermarket staff, he warned. More

Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door
from The New York Times
If you try on a sweater in a department store dressing room, but choose not to buy it, a persistent sales clerk won’t pursue you into the street yelling, “Hey, are you sure?” Nor will you receive a call at your home the next day to check again if you want to complete the purchase. But in the online world, visitors to Web stores who touch the goods but leave without buying may be subjected instantaneously to “remarketing,” in the form of nagging e-mail messages or phone calls. More

Obama Signs into Law Credit Card Reform
from USA Today
In the most sweeping changes to the credit card industry in 40 years, President Obama signed into law Friday an act to restrict practices he says contributed to consumers' financial problems during the recession. "With this bill we are putting in place some common sense reforms designed to protect consumers," Obama said at a signing ceremony at the White House More

Message in What We Buy, but Nobody’s Listening
from The New York Times
If you ask market researchers or advertising executives, you might hear about the difference between “rational” and “emotional” buying decisions, or about products falling into categories like “hedonic” or “utilitarian” or “positional.” But Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, says that even the slickest minds on Madison Avenue are still in the prescientific dark ages. More

Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns
from The Wall Street Journal
Malls, those ubiquitous shopping meccas that sprang up in the 1950s, are dwindling in number, with many struggling properties reduced to largely vacant shells. With their maze of walkways and fast-food courts, malls have long been an iconic, if sometimes unsightly, presence in the American retail landscape. A few were made famous by their sheer size, others for the range of shopping and social diversions they provided. More

A Museum Lover's Stimulus Package, 15 Museums for $25
from Artdaily
The Wadsworth announced today its participation in the Connecticut Art Trail’s new Art Pass, which enables visitors to experience all fifteen world-class museums for just $25. The pass, a $75 value, is valid for any two-week period determined by the buyer and children under twelve are free when accompanied by an adult. The Art Pass is available for purchase at www.arttrail.org and after Memorial Day, on Expedia.com. More

Cultural Center Gift Shop Construction OK'd
from The Charleston Gazette
Capitol Building Commission members gave approval for renovations to space in the Charleston, W. Va., Cultural Center to house a gift shop for visitors to the soon-to-open state museum. Commissioners approved plans for more than $400,000 of renovations to the 1,706-square-foot space on the northeast corner of the center's first floor, adjacent to the Great Hall and across from the state archives library. More

Chicago's Art Institute Expansion Makes it Nation's Second Largest Museum
from Pantagraph
Light, bright and definitely pricey — the Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago is a triumph for architect Renzo Piano. In a single stroke, the 264,000-square-foot wing turns Chicago’s art museum into the nation’s second-largest and opens up the previously windowless fortress of culture to the sky and the city. And, luckily, the wing was funded during the bull market of the 1990s. Its $300 million price tag, plus $110 million for related improvements and upkeep, would be almost unthinkable in today’s economy. More