A Cabinets of Curiosity Call for Art

Even if you’re not sentimental about objects, chances are you have something in your home that you don’t use or display, but also can’t get rid of: the tiny, faded newborn hat that came home with you from the hospital, the rubber dinosaurs you loved and knew all the names of in 2nd grade, the middle school sports trophies you’re still a little proud of, or the cross stitch with your name on it that your grandma spent many hours making for your high school graduation. Every time you get out that box, you go through it, relive a few pieces of your personal history, think to yourself, “What should I do with this stuff?” and then reconfigure the careful tetris of the objects and close it back up for the next ten years. 

Contemporary minimalism preaches that ‘stuff’ is burdening your life. Weighing you down. Making you broke. Robbing your joy. Distracting you from the ‘real’ value of your life. There’s countless self help books written on the topic. There’s certainly merit to reexamining our relationship with stuff—curbing our appetite for consumption and reminding ourselves that our deepest satisfactions don’t lie in trendy home updates or the newest water bottle fad. But it’s worth recognizing too that our tendency toward overconsumption and wastefulness is more often a result of viewing material things as having too little value rather than too much, as disposable rather than useful, as burden rather than gift.  

This exhibition in miniature is a celebration of that which is, perhaps, functionally useless, but somehow precious. We may have a variety of feelings about the things we’ve saved: tenderness, frustration, guilt, gratitude, obligation, but probably not apathy. So, for once in their long material lives, let’s bring them out of the boxes and into the light. Chances are you have something like that. Chances are, it has a story to tell. 

Objects will be displayed in a set of historic cabinets. Any 2-D, 3-D, time-based, or digital work will be considered. 

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP Important Dates:

Deadline to submit - August 1, 2026

Decision letters go out - August 14, 2026

Work drop off - August 21, 2026

Install - August 24 - September 4, 2026

Exhibition Run - September 8 - November 7, 2026

Work pick up - November 10 - 14, 2026

Rolling CALL for art: Cabinets of Curiosity!

Intersect Arts Center invites artists to explore their interpretation of the Wunderkammer, or "Cabinet of Curiosity," utilizing historic casework in our Lobby. As the first point of contact for both new visitors and IAC regulars, the lobby serves as a welcoming space and a transitional pathway, guiding the diverse community we serve to their next destination, including our gallery, maker spaces, educational spaces, and private studios. 

The location of the cabinets offer a unique consideration to engage with the current dynamic of the space and their potential to transform the simple passageway into a thought-provoking experience.

Historically, cabinets were collections of enigmatic objects, serving as a window into a collector’s desire to understand the world while simultaneously becoming a reflection of one's identity and even a positioning of social status. We desire to see how your curiosity can fill these cabinets and what could come to life.

We are especially interested in projects that explore the intersections of art with science, nature, identity, and the systems we use to organize and interpret the world—creating a dialogue that deepens our understanding of these connections.