Q&A with the Met's Kathy Mucciolo

What drew you to a career in visual merchandising?
Being an art school student and working in retail positions, I always found myself being asked to do display work.

What was your first job in the industry?
Working as a floater at Bloomingdale’s, in Stamford, Conn. I pestered the display manager for weeks until he let me join his staff for a month. I had a blast, despite the hours of covering pads in the basement and the hot glue gun burns.

How has gift shop retailing changed during your 20 years at the Met?
When I first started as a salesperson at our Stamford, Conn., location, the satellite museum shop was a novel concept and drew lots of attention. Now, there’s much more competition, so we need to work a little harder to set ourselves apart.

How are you working on that?
We’re focusing on telling the story of the Met, from the different curatorial departments to particular artists and works in our collection. It started in our spring 2009 catalog, and then in the fall, we began to introduce it in a more graphic way in the retail environment. We’re also modernizing the museum’s internal shops and improving the customers’ shopping experience with enhanced fixtures and graphics.

What’s your favorite room in the museum?
The Temple of Dendur (shown). You can sit there, close your eyes and imagine yourself transported to ancient Egypt, but then look outside and see Central Park and feel the hum of New York.

Have you learned anything about visual merchandising by studying other artists’ works?
Yes, but not specifically one artist’s work. I never formally studied visual merchandising, so I use my art school training as my foundation for doing display work. All of the same concepts apply: composition, form, color, texture, etc.

If you could have lunch with any artist (living or dead), who would it be?
Andy Warhol. I was a bit of a Warhol groupie in art school (even had a memorial service for him in class when he died), and the fact that he started out his career doing windows gives us something in common.

What’s your biggest vice?
If I were trying to sound cool I’d say wine, but in reality, it’s chocolate.

Favorite city to visit?
Paris. It was the first European city I ever visited and I was instantly captivated by the art and architecture.

“If I only knew when I was younger what I know now, I would…”
I would not think twice about being the weird, “artsy” kid. Being that kid in school has helped to create the person I am today.