Time was when a visit to a museum included shopping for a postcard or an exhibition catalogue. Nowadays, most art institutions have expanded their wares to include home furnishings, jewelry, clothing, toys and books. While it might enhance the museum experience, selling all those products can become a distraction for administrators, taking away time and money from their primary business: exhibiting works of art. If that weren’t trouble enough, retail operations, intended to supplement museum admissions, don’t always end up in the black.
Last year, to try to solve the problem of doing art and commerce profitably, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA) became one of the first museums in the country to spin off the management of its retail operations into a for-profit company, Museum Enterprise Partners Inc. (MEP). Owned by the MFA and senior management, MEP replaced the museum’s 30-year-old Enterprise division and the MFA became its first client. From its offices in Boston’s South End, MEP operates both the main MFA store and an exhibition store inside the museum, two mall stores in downtown Boston at Copley Place and Faneuil Hall, the MFA catalogue and Web site, the catalogue outlet store on Cape Cod and a wholesale/corporate division. To handle distribution and fulfillment, MEP has a state-of-the-art 100 O00-square-foot warehouse in Avon, Mass., which includes an 85-seat call center.

What is the primary business for a museum, according to the speaker().