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Strike While the Iron is Hot: Why Major Museum Shows are Prime for Licensing Art
The critically acclaimed Joan Jonas and Käthe Kollwitz retrospectives at MoMA create lucrative licensing opportunities.
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With concurrent retrospectives currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, ARS members Käthe Kollwitz and Joan Jonas are having a major museum moment. Here’s why exhibitions present ideal opportunities for licensing:
Heightened Visibility and Cultural Relevance
Groundbreaking exhibitions at prestigious institutions like MoMA generate significant buzz, media coverage, and public interest, shining a spotlight on the artists and their oeuvres. (The New York Times, for example, wrote glowing reviews for each exhibition.) This increased visibility and cultural currency make it an opportune time to explore licensing initiatives and capitalize on the artists’ heightened popularity.
Prestige and Artistic Legacy
Retrospectives cement an artist’s place in the canon of art history and celebrate their enduring impact. Associating with celebrated figures like Kollwitz, renowned for capturing raw human emotions through her powerful prints and sculptures, or Jonas, a trailblazer of feminist and environmental art movements, lends immense prestige and gravitas to brands and products.
Retail Opportunities for Built-In Audiences
Museums frequently offer merchandising and retail opportunities tied to major retrospectives, providing brands with potential licensing or co-branding partnerships for exhibition-related products.
Benefiting from Institutional Marketing Efforts
Museums invest significant resources in marketing and promoting major retrospectives, which brands can leverage more broadly through licensed products or campaigns tied to the exhibition’s promotional efforts.
Capitalizing on Collector and Investor Interest
Major retrospectives can reignite interest among art collectors and investors, creating potential licensing opportunities for limited-edition or investment-grade products featuring the artist’s works.
The critically acclaimed Kollwitz and Jonas retrospectives at MoMA underscore why major museum exhibitions present such compelling opportunities for licensing. From heightened visibility and cultural relevance to prestigious artistic legacies, institutional marketing efforts, merchandising avenues, and collector interest – the stars have aligned.
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