Julie Averbach has written a book celebrating the displays, the murals and the installations at the grocery store chain.
Julie Averbach has written a book celebrating the displays, the murals and the installations at the grocery store chain.
Julie Averbach has written a book celebrating the displays, the murals and the installations at the grocery store chain.
Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at the art shoppers can find when they go to a Trader Joe’s in Manhattan.
Julie Averbach led the way into what she said was an art gallery.
It didn’t look like one. There were no velvet ropes in front of the most valuable pieces, and no little labels on the wall saying who had created the art.
But this was not really an art gallery. It was a supermarket, the Trader Joe’s at 2073 Broadway, near West 72nd Street, a place to experience “the joy of finding beauty where we least expect it,” Averbach said. Above the refrigerated display cases and the fruit and vegetable bins. In the aisles. On the packages that sit on the shelves.
“When we typically go to a grocery store, we tend to look straight at the shelves, put the products in our carts, buy them and go home,” she said. “I’ve come to look up, look down and go into a mode of art appreciation first and buying second. The store and the products themselves are art.” At Trader Joe’s, she said, “even a simple banana display becomes a 360-degree art installation” topped by King Kong, suspended from the ceiling.
She moved on to a mural scene above the avocados. It showed four figures dancing on the Lincoln Center steps, with the Metropolitan Opera House in the background: a package of Joe-Joe’s chocolate-and-vanilla-cream sandwich cookies, a bottle of pink lemonade, a shaker of “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning and a can of corn.