Scott recently paid a visit to our fine nation's capital. Besides having tea with the Obama family, he visited a the cornucopia of stellar Smithsonian museums, including the American Art Museum that currently houses the first ever "Art of Video Games" exhibit. The collection highlights a treasure trove of material, albeit still a small segment of the industry as a whole. Scott and I discussed their game choices in detail in
an earlier podcast, but now one of us has some familiarity with the look and feel of the exhibit. Join us on this week's podcast as we talk about modern art, cross-generational sharing, and the pleasure of being a tour guide. As always, we encourage you to leave your thoughts on the exhibit and the future of games in museums in the comments section below.
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Show notes:
- Run time: 40 min 04 sec
- "
The Art of Video Games," an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
- For more thoughts, see "
E is for Everyone" by Richard Clark via
Unwinnable
- Music provided by
Brad Sucks
My
ReplyDeleteHopefully the Smithsonian folks were keeping track of attendance. It would be nice to be able to prove that there's interest with some cold, hard numbers!
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks for linking to the JP LeBreton BioShock thing! I watched it a while back but forgot to share the link. Super interesting. I hope more designers do similar things in the future!
I went the first week the exhibit opened, and to be honest it was a little underwhelming. Right before you get into the exhibit proper there was a massive wall of TVs all tuned to different channels, one of them featuring tits.
ReplyDeleteThe video segments where they interviewed developers were nice, but the way they constantly cycled made them hard to follow.
Our visit was packed with people too, so waiting in line to play a game was a no go.
Honestly the exhibit represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the medium, all the consoles are behind glass, with little snippets of text elucidating their relevance. That's not how games work, games are about interaction, and there was none to be had until the last, dark cramped room where action actually happened.