Editor of the University of Illinois journal Visual Arts Research, Jorge Lucero, recently invited people from around the world to connect with each other and share an object that was important in their lives – telling their stories through their belongings.

Lucero, a professor and the chair of art education for the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, created the virtual “Museum of Us” in June for the Art Institute of Chicago. This site is an archive of the screenshots from the zoom-based exhibit, featuring participants’ things and their stories.

All of the participants wrote something about their items on an informational placard that accompanied artwork displayed in a gallery. Lucero felt is was important to have each person write about their possessions because it emphasized the subjectivity and personal stories behind the objects.

This Museum of Us is open to new contributions. If you wish to participate please contact them at this link, sending an image of your object on a plinth/pedestal made of objects in your home (e.g. books, boxes, etc.) along with the title of your object, a date of origin or acquisition, and a tagline about what “collection” to which the object belongs.

You can access Visual Arts Research on JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/journal/visuartsrese or Project MUSE: https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/481.