A traveling miniatures museum is stopping in Tucson this October

Once every week, artist Jessica Oreck would open the doors to her animation studio and prop library, allowing Las Vegas community members to see her growing collection of miniatures.

She soon realized that just one day wasn’t quite enough to feed the demand. 

“It became this thing where people wanted to see it outside of that one day of the week and then we opened the studio for appointments only and it sort of took off,” Jessica says.

She put a pause on the stop-motion animation she had previously been working on and turned the studio into a full-time museum in 2021. 

Three years later, she purchased and renovated a 42-foot trailer to bring her miniatures museum, the Office of Collecting & Design, to cities across the United States. It stops at the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave., from Oct. 14-18. You can buy tickets here.

“I describe it as a traveling museum of tiny lost and forgotten objects,” Jessica says. “We collect the kinds of things you probably don’t think about on a daily basis but are definitely part of your life — lost buttons, lonely dominoes, used pink erasers, dice you can’t play with, empty matchboxes. They’re the sort of things that have no intrinsic value but when you see them, they’re somehow magical and charming.”

The museum has so far traveled 3,500 miles, leaving home for four months of the year in the spring and fall seasons. Other stops on the fall tour include Denver, Santa Fe, Phoenix, El Paso and Houston.

Like the treasures inside the museum, the trailer itself is magical, metallic stars on the ceiling and dark wood furnishings throughout. It feels a little bit royal and a lot a bit cozy — so cozy that the museum is only open to six guests at a time.

“Miniatures are basically a form of spell work because they’re all the things you want and don’t have access to. The pining for it is part of the appeal — pining to be that size and pining to experience this perfect thing. There’s some sort of ‘ouch’ that happens when you look at a really perfect miniature,” Jessica says. “I think the other part of it is this is the exact opposite of most institutions. All of this is tactile and meant to be handled. But at the same time, it’s sort of the opposite of places like Meow Wolf which is also tactile but is bright and loud and huge. My museum is the opposite. People call this the Meow Wolf for introverts. It’s the definition of a small space. The lights are low, it’s very quiet, it’s very much about community and engagement with the real world and other visitors. It’s human-scaled in ways a lot of things aren’t these days. You live in a giant home, you go to a giant supermarket, a giant museum. This is not giant.” 

Three experiences are available ranging from $22-$75 per person:

• Opt for a self-guided tour where you can explore the museum at your own pace — hold the minis, open the drawers, look in all the boxes. 
• Go on a scavenger hunt, map in hand searching for specific objects sprinkled throughout the museum.
• Curate your own collection of found objects, then photograph them in a flat lay style, which is when items are organized on a flat surface and photographed from above.

“When we started out, we just had the classic tour where people could come in and touch things. I was posting flat lays online and a visitor came in and was like, ‘Can I make my own?’ and I was like, “Huh, that’s an idea,’” Jessica says. “It’s now my favorite way of sharing the museum. It’s somewhere in between play therapy and art practice. Talk about intimate — you can really see inside someone’s brain when they’re having this experience and reconnecting with things.”

While some of the items inside the Office of Collecting & Design were donated, Jessica has long been a collector. She’s also an artist who has handmade a selection of trinkets inside the museum.

“My parents say before I could talk, I was collecting things,” she says. “On top of that, a lot of the collections were for my animations — (for example,) miniatures from a series I did about insects where I had to build a tiny living room for a grasshopper to crawl through. Then when I had the museum, I couldn’t stop. I never set out to collect tiny hats but at a certain point, I found a tiny hat and then I found another two tiny hats — nothing here I’ve tried to collect. It’s just that things sort of appear and are meant to be here.”

When the museum isn’t traveling to new cities, Jessica finds herself planning logistics for the next tour — finding future hosts, learning about sales tax in certain cities, applying for permits and planning the route very carefully because the trailer is too tall for certain roads. The Office of Collecting & Design also runs free and paid mail clubs and postal swaps to foster the trinket-loving community.

While the museum hasn’t ever been to Tucson, Jessica visits every year. Her dad is a mineral collector and she grew up coming to the gem show every January.

“It’s been so interesting to watch the growth of the rock show since I was little,” she says. “I love that it’s grown. I love Tucson.”

🗝️ The Office of Collecting & Design is stopping in Tucson from Oct. 14-18 at the Tucson Museum of Art, which is located at 140 N. Main Ave. Get your tickets and learn more about the Office of Collecting & Design here. To kick off their stay, I’m collaborating with Cactus Clouds Art to host a market filled with tiny things on Oct. 13. Find more information about the market here. 🎲