To whom are you related? Where do you keep unloved heirlooms? Which family member is not to be seen on any photographs? Are family text messages secret, or banal? Does family have a nationality? The essence of what family and relatives were, and are, can hardly be recorded with normative models. For this reason, an interdisciplinary team from the fields of art, design, social and cultural anthropology, ethnology and art education perused digital and material objects and pictures for the Familienmacher [Family Makers] exhibition in the Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde [Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art] in Vienna. The exhibition does not present any closed display cases, finished installations or fixed interpretations of the exhibits. Instead the three open displays Festhalten, Verbinden, Loswerden [Holding on, Connecting, Letting Go] invite the public to bring family heirlooms, family motifs in their minds and SMS messages to the museum, thus articulating the process of circulation. The catalogue documents these interventions of visitors by analysing and photographing them. Since this systematically implements the format of the participation, it appears not at the beginning of the exhibition, but at the finissage.