Open Drawers represents a multidimensional understanding of home and heart. Where we find home may not always be where we lay our head at night—it may be in objects and materials that we travelled with across oceans, have stowed away and forgotten about, use everyday and carry with us often, and which we find and keep to remind us of family, people, and places we both know and have never known. The heart, as a sustainer of human life, could be what inspires us, provides momentum, reminds us of a pleasant pastime, reflects our roots, or illustrates hope.
Each “drawer” (the individual cases holding the displays) of the exhibit offers a meditation on the phrase “home is where the heart is.” The home is private until you open the door, and each of these drawers is an invitation inside the “home” of the curator.
We invite each visitor to these collections to contemplate their own understandings of heart and home and to consider which drawers of their own they might want to open and reflect upon.
Open Drawers is a collaboration between the Center for Design and Material Culture and the interdepartmental Dimensions of Material Culture graduate course. Each drawer is curated by one graduate student. The exhibit is on display in the Nancy Nicholas Hall “Link” from March 31, 2025 to May 15, 2025, with a rotation of new drawers on April 24, 2025.
