Tommy Martin

Murakami-Vuitton Store

Louis Vuitton muticolor, Mr. Murakami, Chibi Kinoko, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Inside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, there was a luxury store operated by Louis Vuitton. Visitors were indeed snapping up the limited-edition leather goods, embellished with Mr. Murakami’s cartoon hands and Chibi Kinoko mushroom-shaped characters. And most people seemed to sense that they were witness to a marriage made in mercantile heaven.

Inside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, there was a luxury store operated by Louis Vuitton. Visitors were indeed snapping up the limited-edition leather goods, embellished with Mr. Murakami’s cartoon hands and Chibi Kinoko mushroom-shaped characters. And most people seemed to sense that they were witness to a marriage made in mercantile heaven.

The show, with its $960 handbags and $695 agendas for sale, created a flap even before its opening on Oct. 29. Art-world purists charge that it has eroded the line between culture and commerce. “It has turned the museum into a sort of upscale Macy’s,” the art critic Dave Hickey chided in an interview.

The first deluxe boutique to be integrated in a formal exhibition, the Murakami-Vuitton store is “a terrific example of not just the artist embracing commercial success but proactively going after it,” said Elizabeth Currid, the author of “The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City”. In this kind of venture, everyone profits, Ms. Currid said. “You are creating a new kind of product, one that expands the economic horizons of all the parties involved.”

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