MSA Member Dispatches from Home: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

April 13, 2020

By Stacey Stachow

In these truly challenging and unsure days, all our members are inventing and reinventing ways to sustain their businesses — and themselves. So many of us have had to create new ways to communicate with our colleagues and each other — many, many of them now working at home. As we navigate this time — with no fixed date for a return to normalcy — we would like to offer a series of weekly blogs that are “Dispatches from Home.” Our authors will send ideas about how they are coping with this emergency — with tips, innovations and good humor. We hope that all the varied people in our community help each other, survive and thrive during these incredibly difficult days, and arrive on the other side of this national emergency with their spirits — and businesses — intact.

Working from Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic

I have decided to post on Facebook one product per day that I have purchased from a museum store that is in my house. It has been kind of fun looking around my rooms for items that I obviously liked enough to buy for myself — and maybe for my museum store.

It’s amazing when I look around; I find something from a museum store in every room of my house (including the bathroom). I can probably even name which MSA national or chapter meeting I was at when I bought said product. I have a blue bear from Denver Art Museum, an itty-bitty rhinoceros from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, a glass pumpkin from Historic Hudson Valley (Sleepy Hollow), a cinder block from the National Building Museum in D.C., a Day of the Dead dog from the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, a race car from Detroit Institute of Arts, an Arthur Dove placemat from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston — and that’s only in my living room! Oh, I also see a dinosaur from the Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

There are also so many items from our dedicated MSA vendors! My kitchen has countless towels from Vestiges, Mierco and Blue Q. There are coffee mugs, dog bowls and magnets attached to my fridge from Popcorn Custom Products. I see a keychain flashlight and a pile of pens from Burns Rep Group. My plates and dishes are even from a museum (the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming).

My bookcase is loaded with countless books about art history from multiple publishers and collection catalogues from many MSA affiliated museums.

Oh, and the jewelry! That would be a whole separate post!

I have a gift drawer filled with hostess gifts and hope to give them all out to currently socially distanced friends when I’m allowed to be social again. Do you have a gift drawer for emergency gifts?

I am starting to think I have a problem; I have a lot of “products” from a lot of museums and MSA vendors. I think I am not alone here, and it’s not such a bad problem to have. How many items can you find in your house from various museum stores?

Keep an eye out for my Facebook posts. My product research could get interesting by the time we all go back to our museums.

I look forward to when we will all meet again and hope that healthy times are ahead.