Traveling museum of everyday objects sells out in Tucson
The Office of Collecting and Design sold out at the Tucson Museum of Art with 347 drawers of small, odd and oddly familiar objects.
A traveling museum built from the stuff that ends up at the bottom of a junk drawer sold out in Tucson within days.
The Tucson Museum of Art hosted The Office of Collecting and Design in its parking lot Oct. 14 to 18, and hundreds of visitors turned out to explore the trailer’s 347 drawers and find something small, odd and oddly familiar.
The installation was created by Jessica Oreck, who previously worked in museums and with stop-motion animation. The collection has roots in that animation work.
“When I moved to Las Vegas, I decided that I was going to open my stop-motion animation studio and it was gonna be a proper library, so everything would be at my fingertips,” Oreck told Tucson Spotlight.
In 2020, she started building what is now The Office of Collecting and Design. It began as a small collection in a strip mall, and by 2024 it had turned into a traveling museum housed in a renovated RV.
The installation is often described as a “nostalgia machine,” with a goal of helping adults find joy and whimsy in sorting through nostalgic pieces. It’s made up of unusual or forgotten items that are easy to overlook but hold memories.
“It’s a lot of objects that are, that I would consider, sort of, items sifted to the bottom of the drunk drawer,” Oreck said. “It’s things that are a little bit charming, too charming to throw away. They don’t have any innate value, but you put them together, and there’s something really magical about them.”
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The traveling museum has three experiences to choose from: a self-guided tour, a scavenger hunt or a flatlay creation.
The self-guided tour lets guests explore at their own pace and look in every nook and cranny for an hour. Guests who choose the scavenger hunt are given a map and hunt for items in a specific collection.
The scavenger hunt helps attendees spot things they might not have noticed at first glance, Oreck said.
The flatlay experience is the most interactive, with guests curating their own items and creating a “flatlay,” a photo of a collection of objects shot from above.
“It’s really a way for adults to find, wonder and delight and sort of tap into their inner child,” Oreck said. “Just be open-minded and let people come in and experience the museum that they want to, the way that they want to experience it.”
The installation is headed to Texas next, with Oreck describing the tour schedule as a fast-paced, exciting process.
“It’s a multi-hour process to pack up and to break down. We have a whole system for keeping everything in place when you put 50,000 fragile objects into an earthquake machine,” Oreck said. “It takes a lot of breaking down and setting up to get everything secure.”
After a few days in one town, it’s on to the next.
“The community is the best part,” Oreck said. “I love getting to meet new people, who are also collectors and artists. It’s a really interesting community of intellectuals that surround this type of art.”
The Office of Collecting and Design tours twice a year and is currently making its way from the West Coast to the East Coast.
To follow its journey and see upcoming tour dates, visit its Instagram page or website.
Emma Diaz is a University of Arizona alum and freelance journalist based in Tucson.
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