A special sort of museum is rolling into Houston this week. The Office of Collecting and Design will be parked at the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art from October 28 through November 1.

Dedicated to little lost items and the art of nostalgia, the Office of Collecting and Design has garnered a loyal social media following. The converted RV that the museum now calls home inspires expressions of delight and wonder. With visitors encouraged to explore the many drawers, containers, and cabinets within the small space, discovering items such as beads, rocks, and film negatives.

“It's stuff that's a little bit too charming to throw away that has no intrinsic value,” artist and owner Jessica Oreck explains to CultureMap. “It’s obsolete things, it's broken things, it's used things, dried out things. We have a collection of lost buttons and lonely dominoes and used pink erasers and dice you can't play with.”

“We talk about the museum as sort of a nostalgia machine,” Oreck says. “A way for people to find objects from their childhood that they would have forgotten about.”

The museum may look charming and Narnia-esque, but Oreck says it’s not meant for children.

“The museum is really for adults because it is about sort of bringing that wonder and delight of childhood back to an adult mindset,” she says, “which is something that there's not a lot of space for in our contemporary culture.”

That desire to reconnect with childhood wonder is reflected in the growing interest in nostalgic hobbies and playful experiences. In an October 2026 report, The Harris Poll found that 41 percent of adults who participated in playful activities said being reminded of something they loved growing up made them more likely to purchase a playful product or experience. Relaxation was an even more common motivation, cited by 50 percent.

Adults seeking comfort and escape has also led to a renewed interest in miniatures. The Economist recently explored the appeal of the pastime, including its nostalgic draw and the sense of control in a small, carefully crafted world.

Oreck, however, says she doesn't follow trends.

“I am basically unplugged from contemporary culture. I don't spend time consuming media of any type with the exception of books,” Oreck says. “My work has always been about taking things that are basically invisible, because we've become so used to them, and trying to get us to look at them again with fresh eyes.”

Although it's now housed in a converted, 42-foot RV, the museum wasn't originally conceived as a traveling exhibition. In 2020, it began in Las Vegas as Oreck's prop library and animation studio.

The concept grew in popularity, prompting Oreck to quit her animation job and run the museum full-time. By 2024, she had launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to transform an old RV into a traveling version of the museum. Its first tour took place along the West Coast in 2025.

Now, aspiring visitors keep a close eye on the museum’s travel schedule, hoping to snag a ticket to explore its collection of curiosities.

From dumpster diving and estate sales to flea markets in Europe, which she describes as “cooler and better” that those in America, collecting has always been part of Oreck’s life. Although the museum occasionally receives donations, she estimates that she collected about 80 percent of its items herself. Her one rule: She doesn’t order items online.

“I have to hold it in my hand before I bring it into the museum,” she says.

When the Orange Show reached out to inquire if Oreck would bring the Office of Collecting and Design to its property, she was interested but knew little of the organization. That changed when she learned about its archive of D.D. Smalley and the Hyde Park Miniature Museum. A Houston collector known for his fascination with miniatures, Smalley displayed his collection in a museum in his attic.

“D.D. Smalley was a huge hero of mine when I was a teenager and I just jumped at the chance to see that,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don't care if nobody comes to visit.’”

For those unable to snag a ticket to explore the Office of Collecting and Design, a trinket swap will take place Friday, October 30, during the Happening at the Orange Show.

Self-guided tickets are sold out, but two experiences remain available for the Houston stop. The two-hour flatlay session ($75) invites visitors to curate, arrange, and photograph a collection of objects, taking home a tiny instant-film print of their creation. The one-hour scavenger hunt ($35) sends visitors searching for objects throughout the museum using a hand-drawn map, which they can take home stamped with their results.

Courtesy of Office of Collecting and Design

The Office of Collecting and Design is a traveling museum dedicated to nostalgia and tiny forgotten objects.