Museum of
Ordinary ThingsA little attention changes everything.
A brown leather wristwatch on a wooden table beside a camera and a leafy plant.
The collectionExhibit No. 004

A study in remembrance

The hours between.

A wristwatch. A small way of keeping someone close.

The story behind the object
The storysincere

He took it off before washing the dishes. Left it beside the bed at night. Wound it every morning, even on Sundays, when there was nowhere in particular to be.

After he was gone, I wore it for a while. The strap was a little too loose. It lost a few minutes every day. Eventually I stopped setting it, but I never stopped keeping it.

Some things are useful long after they stop doing what they were made to do.

A fictional story, written for this sample exhibit.

What ordinary thing would you keep?

Make an exhibit of your own

Fictional sample exhibit · Back to the collection

Photograph by Nick Dambrosia / Unsplash ↗

A closer look · The full photograph

A brown leather wristwatch on a wooden table beside a camera and a leafy plant.

An ordinary thing, given extraordinary attention.

The Museum of Ordinary Things

Nothing ordinary
about what we keep.

A ticket. A chipped cup. A watch that no longer works. Some objects matter for reasons no label can quite explain. This is a place to try.

This early exhibit explores how a photograph and a few words can give an everyday thing extraordinary attention.

Create an exhibit with your own photograph and words. Save it privately, then choose when to publish it. The two stories in our sample exhibit are fictional.