New York City's Museum of Modern Art ranks as one of the most prestigious museums in the world. You can go there to see iconic creations like Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and Pablo Picasso's The Bullfight, as well as taking in exhibition on thrilling and important art movements throughout history. And now you can play Pac-Man there, too.
MoMA announced today that they'll be adding Portal, The Sims and 12 other classic games to the institution's collection, with more to come. The following games will be installed in the museum's Philip Johnson Galleries next March:
• Pac-Man
• Tetris
• Another World
• Myst
• SimCity 2000
• vib-ribbon
• The Sims
• Katamari Damacy
• EVE Online
• Dwarf Fortress
• Portal
• flOw
• Passage
• Canabalt
This initiative differs a bit from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's "The Art of Video Games" exhibit, which is now traveling around the country. That show focused on the visual aesthetics of video games as a medium. MoMA sounds like they want to go a bit deeper. Here's Senior Curator Paola Antonelli:
Are video games art? They sure are, but they are also design, and a design approach is what we chose for this new foray into this universe. The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design-a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity. Our criteria, therefore, emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects-from the elegance of the code to the design of the player's behavior-that pertain to interaction design.
Other games that MoMA is looking to install as part of their collection include Minecraft, Chrono Trigger, NetHack, Grim Fandango, M.U.L.E. and many more. Plans are for some of the games to be playable depending on length while others like EVE Online will feature player-sourced guided tours.