The Field Museum Store

Good museum shop design integrates cultural imagery with commercial activities and supports the operating integrity of the museum.

The 9,000-square-foot Field Museum Store for this world-class institution required the combined disciplines of interior design, fixture design, special effects design, lighting, and visual communications/graphic design. The challenge was to reflect this dynamic institution’s commitment to facilitating the understanding of the diversity of human culture and the natural environment, past and present.

Sparks designed the interior architecture as a blend of the old and the new. Just off the famous Stanley Field Hall in a new location near the South entry, Sparks reinstated the original south façade windows, which were previously covered, as an exhibit hall and enhanced the high ceilings through uplighting. The result is a light-filled room where shoppers experience the artifacts of other cultures and the wonders of nature to the sounds of world music. Existing architectural features in the building—such as Roman grilles, heavy architraves, mouldings, and deep ceiling coffers—were reinterpreted within the store design to maintain continuity with the classical, turn-of-the-century building. All fixture designs were inspired by the functional designs found in the museum curators’ laboratories.

For the store’s identity logo, signage systems, packaging, and collateral, a visual frieze called the “cultural and living things frieze” was developed. Sparks’ designers were inspired by cultural folk arts, South American and Asian symbols, motifs, patterns, and silhouettes of multicultural peoples and living things, past and present. This frieze was reinforced in a signature mosaic tile design for the floor at the entry “forecourt”. The Field Museum has a history as one of the most popular destinations in Chicago for children. A portion of the store was designed as “Kid’s Field Trip”, including designs for three-dimensional dinosaurs emerging from a fantasy jungle and a custom-designed area rug that repeats the jungle motif.

Overall, the store was intended to complement the Field Museum experience and represent one of several significant improvements associated with the launch of Chicago’s Museum Campus connecting the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, and the Field Museum.