Wednesday, July 24, 2013

in other news....

At the beginning of this month, one of my friends and I went to the phoenix art Museum to see the Art of Video Games exhibition currently on display. We were excited to see video game art, reminisce about old school games, and show his son the kind of games we played when we were his age. We went on the first frday of the month, since it meant free admission. 

Once we went in, we looked ad a few other exhibits, then we proceeded  to the Art of Video Games exhibit and were told that it had an additional cost, which initially was no problem, until we actually went into the exhibit.

The first problem was that  there wasn't much to the exhibit, mostly some prerecorded footage from various games and brief explanations about the games.
the actual artwork from video games was in a small case about 4 foot by 5 foot, and had mostly development artwork from world of warcraft in it. That was when I realized two things, That was all there was, and that the museum had left up art from a different exhibit in the same gallery as the Art of Video Games exhibit.

Maybe I had a high expectation from the exhibit, since it was supposed to be from the smithsonian, but I think that is being too kind. If we had not gone on first friday, we would have had to pay 24 dollars for each adult, and 12 for my friend's son. (His daughter is young enough to get in free.) I think 24 dollars is a bit much to see what amounts to little more than the displays at gamestop, minus the posters. 
for 24 dollars, I think that it is not unreasonable to see displays featuring: The evolution of box art, art the games have inspired, how games have inspired people to make mods, and other actual art related to video games.

Instead, what we got was a bunch of pillars with monitors showing short clips of game play, a few timed demos of games, a video presentation, and little else.



The experience was so dissapointing that I will not go back to the phoenix art museum.

1 comment:

  1. That is disappointing, I know the Columbus Museum of art had a video game exhibit and lego exhibit in the last year but both were well rounded affairs. Sad to see this wasn't the case for you.

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