Art & Fashion on Your Face
For at least a little while longer, masks are a fact of life. While we all cross our fingers for an end to the craziness, some bright spots have appeared. Museums have started to reopen, for one. Our selection of virtual scavenger hunts and online team games continues to expand. And fun, fanciful, and fashionable face masks are totally a thing now.
Even if you’re not ready to physically visit museums right now, you can still support them by shopping for museum face masks. From quirky to lovely, face masks are available from online museum gift shops all over the world. Here are just a few of our favorite museum face masks.
Stained-Glass Masks
The New-York Historical Society offers an assortment of artsy masks, including four with designs inspired by its famous collection of Tiffany lamps.
Dinos and Tigers and Penguins, Oh My
At the Field Museum in Chicago, breathe on the wild side with a pair of two-pack masks. One features a dinosaur and a tiger, while the other features a giraffe and a very, very happy penguin. Each set is available in adult and youth sizes.
Get Science-y
While the American Museum of Natural History’s Science Curiosity mask might hide half your face, it will help show off your nerdy side.
Joy, Always & Everywhere
We could all use some of that, for sure. The collection of masks at LACMA, or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, includes a bunch designed by visual artist Shinique Smith. Our favorite has got to be the pair titled Joy, Always and Everywhere. Those have over-the-ear straps, but if you prefer over the head, check out these masks from the same collection.
New York, New York
From the Metropolitan Museum of New York comes this two-pack of vintage city scenes. The first, seen above, is based on Adolf Dehn’s Spring in Central Park, and the second features a 1941 photo of the old Penn Station.
Pretty in Pink?
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, sells a slew of masks (including one you’ll see coming a mile away). At the bottom of the page, though, you’ll find an assortment of face masks designed by artisans from all over Mexico who usually design more traditional masks. Perhaps the most eye-catching is this Rosa mask, featuring a bright-pink-and-red face that makes a little more sense on the Purépecha mask you’ll see on that page.
Dutch Masker
From the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam comes this Rembrandt self-portrait mask. And it’s a four pack, so if you’ve got three friends who also want to walk around wearing a famous painter making a silly face, you’re all set.
Subtle Statement
Among the museum face masks at the National Gallery of Art in D.C., the boldest has to be this funky, colorful mask based on Robert Delaunay’s Political Drama.
I’m Screaming
If anything sums up how we feel about 2020, it’s this Edvard Munch mask from the Detroit Institute of Arts. It’s sold out as we write this because of course it is, but the museum has other masks on offer as well.
Fine and D-Andy
The Dallas Museum of Art’s collection of masks includes a Scream mask and some cool options we haven’t seen elsewhere. The grooviest is this trippy Andy Warhol mask, based on a piece from the Lost Warhol Collection by Karen Bystedt, a friend of Warhol’s.
Eye Yai Yai
Your eyes are about the only thing a face mask doesn’t cover, so why not…another pair, we guess? The highlight of the many masks available from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts would have to be this mask featuring weirdly crossed Eyes of Horus.
Death Mask
As per usual, the Mütter Museum of medical oddities in Philadelphia holds nothing back. If you want to wear something in-your-face on your face while staying away from other peoples’ faces, their Spit Spreads Death mask will do the trick.
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Photo credits: Lead photo by Vera Davidova on Unsplash; all other mask images courtesy of the museums