In Defense of LAMoCA's Louis Vuitton Boutique

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles announced earlier this month that as part of a Takashi Murakami retrospective this fall, Louis Vuitton would open a boutique in the gallery space selling leather goods designed by the artist. The purist Cassandras are crying that it's another example of a museum cozying up to a corporation and engaging in commercialism.

They've totally missed the point.

The Vuitton outpost isn't a museum partnership with a corporate brand or a gift shop. (LAMoCA isn't even making any money off the shop.) It's part of Murakami's art. His interest is in knocking down the wall that separates high art from low art; that's why he makes everything from paintings for blue-chip dealer Larry Gagosian to the ubiquitously-known Vuitton bags to mouse pads and cell phone caddies sold through his company Kaikai Kiki. A retrospective of Murakami's career that didn't include a retail space of some sort would be incomplete. And museum officials recognize that — they told the New York Times that the boutique "symbolizes the interweaving of high art, mass culture and commerce that has become essential to Murakami's philosophy."

You can hate Murakami. But you can't respect him as an artist and disagree with LAMoCA's Vuitton shop.