Photo albums were stacked to the ceiling next to boxes randomly stuffed with photos.
Bravado released more than 100 items, from baseball caps to boxes containing signed lithographs.
Liywalii Mushokabanji, a staff archaeologist, pointed to boxes of pottery slowly deteriorating in the inhospitable conditions.
They appear everywhere – in repeated patterns across cityscapes, on buildings, on everything from to sticky buns to boxes of plasters.
The apartment measured eight hundred square feet, and soon the living room was devoted entirely to boxes.
The artists of the Fluxus movement in the '60s and the '70s were similarly attracted to boxes, which recalled everything from emergency first-aid kits to reliquaries.
On a recent Thursday, piles of garbage spilled from trash bags on the tables and lumped in the street, next to boxes and a broken television.
"If you say you want to replicate Quantum, you leave it all as it is," Kat said, pointing to boxes displaying each figure.
As they chatted, Ms. Graham explained that she was a working mother who often came home to boxes strewed all over the porch.
"These figural statues were created to serve a protective function, and were attached to boxes or baskets that contained the bones of deceased ancestors," she said.
Extra closets in apartments and hallways, however, should make some difference, Mr. Wolpert said, and residents' mail will be delivered to boxes by each door.
