2 minute read
MUSEUM SHOPS
New Retail VP Embraces Museum Experience
Hearing Teresa Curl recount her career experiences, it seems the new vice president of Retail for the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s Museum Shops was tailor-made for the job.
“My whole life has been in retail,” admits Curl, who started her new role in January. Despite her vast experience working with New Mexican and Native American artists, and curating retail stores throughout the Southwest, Curl maintains she has a lot to learn. She says she feels “true excitement” when driving to work at museums she visited as a child growing up in Albuquerque.
Curl recently spent a year at Los Poblanos Historic Inn and Organic Farm, in Albuquerque’s North Valley, as director of retail brand strategy. Beginning at age 19, she came up in the business with a summer job at New Mexico-based Avila Retail, which operates airport specialty stores in Albuquerque, Denver, Phoenix and San Francisco. She eventually rose to become the company’s CEO.
Curl says she logged valuable experience working with regional and Indigenous artists at Avila’s 25 stores. In 2018, after Avila was sold, she says, “I wanted to be working with local artists, folk art, Native American artists and regional goods. This is the job for me.”
Curl says her favorite part of working for the Museum Shops is buying from artists. She’s impressed by the seamless relationship between the shops at the New Mexico History Museum, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, New Mexico Museum of Art and Museum of International Folk Art.
Their partnership with the Foundation, she says, “really gives us economy of scale when we’re trying to buy for multiple stores. It also provides flexibility in staffing. It provides a lot of benefits to be associated. It allows us to run it more affordably.”
What’s next for the Museum Shops? Curl is jazzed about curating items for the future opening of the Vladem Contemporary shop. “It’s really exciting to think of how that store can have its own character, and at the same time, be the sister store to the art museum downtown,” she says. The focus will be on contemporary items in all price ranges, including high-end art and functional design items and jewelry.
She’s got more on her plate, of course, from designing a 2023 budget to streamlining the inventory control system. “I don’t know that that’s incredibly fascinating,” she laughs, “but it is to me, because I’m a retail nerd.”
Teresa Curl, Museum Shops vice president of retail. Photo by Saro Calewarts. For more information about the Museum Shops, contact Teresa Curl at 505.216.0725 or Teresa@museumfoundation.org.
