Today is a very exciting day! Earlier this year, American Art invited the public to help select the video games that will be included in its upcoming exhibition The Art of Video Games. Voting took place between February 14 and April 17, 2011, and we received more than 3.7 million votes from 119,000 people in 175 countries. What an overwhelming response! Today we announced the 80 winning games across 20 gaming systems. The exhibition explores the evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The winning games, along with the discussions on the forum and the emails we’ve received, show that people invested a lot of thought before casting their votes, considering (and sometimes debating) the artistic merits of each game. We are thrilled that this has generated so much discussion, and hope that this is just the beginning as we continue to develop the exhibition over the next ten months.
The 80 games will be displayed in the exhibition as screen shots and short video clips. In addition, the exhibition will feature five games for visitors to play for a few minutes, to gain some feel for the interactivity—Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and World of Warcraft. Here is the archived webcast of the announcement with the exhibition’s curator Chris Melissinos, founder of Past Pixels and collector of video games and gaming systems, and exhibition coordinator Georgina Goodlander.
- Video Games, Chris Melissinos, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
