Document Type
Article
Abstract
Arcade games are increasingly being presented in museum spaces for both contemplation and play. By placing arcades into the museum, curators are creating narratives about the history of games, about the cultural value of these artifacts, and increasingly, about the artistic merit of computer games. However, when arcades enter the museum space, a tension arises between the critical distance demanded by museums—a distance needed to contemplate the curatorial vision of an object—and the closeness and irreverence demanded by play. To this tension, I argue museum spaces bring together these contemporary objects as part of a discourse concerning a postmodern anxiety of vanishing culture. To this, arcades in the museum act to create and sustain a sense of collective nostalgia that intimately links computer games to childhood regardless of the historical record. Ultimately, what I find in considering the arcade in the museum is the prevalence and preservation of play within the resignification of museum spaces.
Repository Citation
deWinter, Jennifer. "The Midway in the Museum: Arcades, Art, and the Challenge of Displaying Play." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 14, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1–19. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol14/iss1/3