Pearl Paint Returns as a Traveling Museum Installation

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Paint brushes clattered to the floor in despair at the news that one of the best art supply stores in the city was closing up shop after 80 years, but all is not lost: Beloved Pearl Paint lives on in a museum, according to Jeremiah's Vanishing New York. Artist Barry Fellman has recreated the interior of the store — going as far as Texas to buy the store's original cabinets, fixtures, and various products — to create an installation that's now on view in Miami and simply titled "Art Store."

"The installation provokes questions about the availability of art supplies, how they are purchased, and how their use is changing as artists adopt digital technology and new forms of presentation," a release for the exhibit explains. "Art Store extends [artist] Duchamp's seminal Readymades, sourced from consumer culture, to a collection of mass produced objects actually used to create art."

The traveling installation will kick off its tour in Miami during Art Basel (it initially debuted there last year) before touring the country in 2016. In what will be the ultimate meta move, the installation will head to the cities that actually had the store — notably, New York — sometime after March.

Meanwhile, Pearl Paint's actual storefront remains empty on Canal Street.