The 15 Objects That Defined 2020

From sweatpants to rubber bullets, a year in culture told through the artifacts we’ll never forget

Illustrations: Simone Noronha

This is the year that’s felt like a decade. Maybe that’s because 2020 so often seemed like a never-ending series of tests: for individuals, for businesses, for society. You can tell the story of a year in the culture through a list of books or songs or prestige TV shows. But my tradition is to tell it through objects — commercial stuff, material things, designed goods, products and artifacts large and small.

What follows is not a set of endorsements: Some of these objects are troubling, a few are ridiculous, many are ambiguous (though some, to be sure, are delightful). These are the objects that caused us to see the world in a new way this year — or the objects that this singular year forced us to consider anew. From heat lamps to Zoom book shelves, these objects will be the souvenirs seared into our collective memory.

Face Masks

Future historians will surely study the evolving presence of face masks in visual imagery of 2020 — its rapid appearance, its stunning variety, even its curious absence from some contexts (Trump rallies, let’s say). This is the year we learned the difference between the N95 masks that medical professionals need but never seem to have enough of, and the cloth versions that became an overnight fashion accessory. From high-end designers to the countless crafters of Etsy, the fashion and apparel business responded with head-snapping alacrity: It was only mid-March when New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman recognized the face mask had become the definitive material “symbol of the current confusion and fear.” This would only accelerate, as this basic medical precaution somehow became an ideological flash point. But the new vibrant marketplace, ranging “from the $1 cotton mask from Hanes to a $1,000 gold-studded face shield by Louis Vuitton,” as Adam Bluestein put it for Marker, helped normalize the mask, making it another wearable tool of self-expression that happens to blend vital function into its variable form. That said…