Pac-Man

I am so happy that the Museum of Modern Art in New York is adding video games to its collection. Some of the games I have seen over the years contain the most dramatic and imaginative art. Finally they are going to get the recognition they deserve. MoMA is going to start with 14 games and then increase to 40.

Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, said, “The list of video games were selected after evaluating each work based on “behavior” (the behavior a game elicits from a player), aesthetics, space (physical environments built by code), and time.

MoMA is not the first museum to honor video games. The Smithsonian Museum just showcased “The Art of Video Games,” an 80-title exhibition. MoMA is proud to join in. Most of the games were donated.

This initial group will be shown in the Museum’s Philip Johnson Galleries, March 2013. The lineup is:

• 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)
• Canabalt (2009)

Over the next few years, MoMA would like to complete this initial selection with Spacewar! (1962), an assortment of games for the Magnavox Odyssey console (1972), Pong (1972), Snake (originally designed in the 1970s; Nokia phone version dates from 1997), Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979), Zork (1979), Tempest (1981), Donkey Kong (1981), Yars’ Revenge (1982), M.U.L.E. (1983), Core War (1984), Marble Madness (1984), Super Mario Bros. (1985), The Legend of Zelda (1986), NetHack (1987), Street Fighter II (1991), Chrono Trigger (1995), Super Mario 64 (1996), Grim Fandango (1998), Animal Crossing (2001), and Minecraft (2011).