Office of Collecting and Design arrives in Tucson

Traveling Miniature Museum Arrives Behind Tucson Museum of Art

A 42-foot-long traveling museum filled with hundreds of drawers of ordinary nostalgic objects has parked in downtown Tucson, drawing sold-out crowds and boosting foot traffic for local arts venues, AZPM News reported. The Office of Collecting and Design, created by filmmaker and stop-animation enthusiast Jessica Oreck, features items that have lost their original purpose, ranging from dice and tiny plastic food to rubber erasers.

The exhibit, which runs behind the Tucson Museum of Art from October 14 through the 18, 2026, accommodates only six visitors at a time for a one-hour self-guided tour or scavenger hunt. Oreck launched the mobile museum project in 2025 after founding a pop-up museum animation studio in a Las Vegas strip mall in 2020. Her current tour starts on the west coast and makes stops in a select number of cities twice a year, with a planned expansion to the east coast by 2028.

Cold Calls and Childhood Memories Shape the Tour Route

Oreck selects each tour stop by cold-calling and emailing people to describe her collection of discarded items. “We collect things that have no intrinsic value, they sort of sift to the bottom of the junk drawer; they are a little too charming to throw away but don’t hold any purpose any longer,” Oreck said, according to AZPM News. “But you put them together with multiples and there is a sort of magic to that.”

Trevor Hinske, director of marketing at the Tucson Museum of Art, discovered the traveling exhibit through one of those outreach emails. “We thought it looked interesting and so we reached out,” Hinske told AZPM News. The partnership allowed the art museum to combine ticket sales and drive extra visitors during a transitional period between exhibitions.

Oreck has personal ties to the city, having frequently visited the Tucson Gem and Mineral show as a child with her mineral-collector father. “It’s interesting to see how much Tucson has changed over the course of my life,” she noted.

Community Events and Future Tour Schedule

Beyond the main trailer exhibit, Oreck hosted supplementary gatherings in the city, including the Tiny Things Market on Oct. 13 and the show & tell essay club on Oct. 15. The Office of Collecting and Design also maintains ongoing community clubs, swaps, and memberships.

The Tucson stop marks the first sell-out of the fall 2026 season for the mobile museum. Oreck continues to schedule semi-annual city visits as she prepares for the journey toward the east coast by 2028.