Office of Collecting and Design

Just three minutes from Las Vegas Boulevard is a small, unusual museum. Part exhibition space, part prop house, and part studio for filmmaker and artist Jessica Oreck, the Office of Collecting and Design is a collection of collections. The museum is packed with tiny objects: three-legged animal figurines, incomplete playing card decks, lonely game pieces, boxes that are too small to hold anything, empty picture frames, locks without keys, etc. These bits of often lost, obsolete, or broken miscellany have been curated and arranged to bring them new aesthetic importance and value. 

Hundreds of small objects and oddities cover the walls, line shelves, overflow from jars, and fill drawers. With large collections of overlooked, vintage ephemera—broken doll parts, pencil stubs, lost buttons, marbles, dollhouse furniture—the entire space reflects a nostalgia for a more analogue childhood and rewards tactile engagement and visual pleasures.

The collection is very much a display of maximalism and a kind of visual throwback to the curio cabinets of early museums. Most of the objects in the museum are from the artist’s personal collection and include (fittingly for Las Vegas) a collection of rare or misshapen antique dice, now displayed on the center wall of the main gallery.

The museum is an interactive space, visitors are encouraged to sit and peruse books in the reading room, open drawers and boxes, play with colors and patterns at the sorting table, and spend time closely inspecting the collection. Flashlights and magnifying glasses are provided.

Behind the main gallery is a secondary gallery for visiting artists and collectors. Check the museum website to see what’s currently on exhibition.