Pac-Man and The Sims Join the Museum of Modern Art

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Pac-Man

Move over Warhol and Pollock, Pac-Man and The Sims are moving in. 

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The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will install a unique selection of video games as part of a new category of interactive design pieces.

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The exhibit, which opens in March 2013 in the Museum’s Philip Johnson Galleries, will add to the Museum's already vast collection of interactive design, which includes select posters, chairs, cars and fonts.

"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," wrote Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design for MoMA, on the Museum's blog. "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."

The first fourteen titles selected are: Pac-Man (1980), Tetris (1984), Another World (1991), Myst (1993), SimCity 2000 (1994), Vib-Ribbon (1999), The Sims (2000), Katamari Damacy (2004), EVE Online (2003), Dwarf Fortress (2006), Portal (2007), flOw (2006), Passage (2008) and Canabalt (2009).

The museum plans to add more video game titles over the next few years, including Pong (1972), Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979) and Donkey Kong (1981), among others.

Email: Joshua.Stecker@thr.com; Twitter: @joshuastecker