UK Museum Transforms Gift Shop to Supermarket

Touching artwork is strictly forbidden in most museums, let alone buying it and taking it home. But the Design Museum in London wants visitors to do precisely that.

It has transformed its gift shop to create what it describes as “the world’s first artist-designed supermarket” as a way of getting around lockdown rules.

Under the government’s plan to ease restrictions, museums in England have to remain shut until May 17 at the earliest, even as gyms, hairdressing salons and pubs have reopened.

But the west London museum has avoided weeks of further closure by converting its gift shop into a store selling essential items.

Proceeds from the five-day exhibition, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, will go towards a fund for artists and designers.

Images of empty shelves and shortages of toilet paper and pasta at supermarkets marked the start of the pandemic in the UK last March.

But the Design Museum shop and its products are far from mundane: clean lines of brightly coloured jars and cans are neatly arranged on the shelves, with nothing out of place.