For its fourth phase, the Co-Lab turned the museum’s curatorial logic inside out. If museums are repositories of culture — where objects tell the stories of communities — what happens when the community itself decides which objects belong, and what they mean?

Getting Personal invited Wichita residents to lend an object from their own lives to the museum: something meaningful, something connected to this place, something they wanted others to see. Selected works from community members were displayed at the Ulrich alongside the contributors’ own words. 

The result was an exhibition shaped not by curatorial selection but by communal contribution: a portrait of Wichita assembled from the things its residents chose to share. Family heirlooms sat alongside everyday objects. Personal histories came into dialogue with one another, and with the museum’s own collection. This phase asked the museum to act as a holder of community memory rather than an arbiter of it. 

The goal of this final phase of the Ulrich Co-Lab is to gather and share the histories of our community, fostering connections and empathy as we reflect on our shared present and past.