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Bowdoin college museum of art

In conjunction with the exhibition, Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now, Bowdoin College Museum of Art and artist Tanja Hollander are photographing your objects on-site and gathering your stories on Saturday, March 29, 2025 from 10 am-12 pm. Light breakfast snacks will be provided.

This is an opportunity for students, staff, faculty and community members to come together and share objects that are important to us as a way to build connection. Tanja’s art practice takes these treasures and photographs them along with descriptions of each item, both cataloguing the things that are important to us and creating an art collection of unique emotional depth.   

What is ephemera?  Historically, the word ephemera is used to describe paper objects with no monetary value meant to be discarded, such as ticket stubs, posters and cards. Here the definition is expanded to include the broken watches of deceased family members, baby teeth, moments in history, mementos from vacation or a subway ride - all simple reminders of people we love and homages to lived experiences.

The Ephemera Project is a crowd-sourced archive of personal objects and stories based in memory, self-reflection, and vulnerability. At its heart, this project encourages and celebrates making space to value and listen to each other.

Your objects and stories will be on view on line and potentially included in Tanja’s future exhibitions.

To participate:

  1. Please bring 2-4 objects, not larger than 8x10” (the size of a piece of paper) on the days below. Tanja will be on site to work with your ephemera and will give it back to you the same day. If there is not enough time on any given day, Tanja will work with BCMA to return it to you asap.

  2. Collection Stations will be located at BCMA

    If you prefer to drop off, please do so anytime between now and March 29th.

    Tanja will be onsite to meet you and work with your belongings and stories on March 29th from 10am -12 pm.

  3. Fill out this google form and release before you come or in person when you drop off your items.

  4. To learn more about the project and FAQs. Questions: E-mail Tanja.

Ephemera collected from the Yewon Kim, from the curatorial intern program at Bowdoin College Museum of Art

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