Is the Smithsonian Video Games Exhibit a Waste of Space?

By Alyssa Rosenberg

Kriston Capps makes a provocative, and I think in some ways convincing, argument against the Smithsonian American Art Museum's upcoming Art of Video Games exhibit. I don't disagree that it's an important curatorial mission to do more shows that focus on African-American art, or that gallery space is a precious resource (especially given its ability to confer legitimacy and prestige on an artist or a form of art), or even that the method of selecting the games included in the exhibition was not exactly rigorous. He writes:

Video games don't need a museum half as much as the Smithsonian thinks it needs video games.

For the American Art Museum, "The Art of Video Games" will serve as one of those golden bricks from Super Mario Bros. that keeps pumping out coins. For the hordes of tourist families that this show draws, it will mean the same quest for the Triforce, the same renegade FOXHOUND nuclear threat, the same super monkey balls—but at a museum, which means education and (maybe) larger screens. If there is any scholarship to the exhibition, it takes a distinctly player-two role to the show's family draw.

This, I think, is where we disagree. Frankly, if I was on the staff of a publicly-funded cultural institution staring down the existing political climate, and the role government support for the arts has the potential to play in the 2012 elections, I would want to enlist a passionate constituency of nerds and future nerds. Museum attendance has been up the last two years, but institutions still report that they're facing significant economic strain. What they need is not just an attendance bump, but to convince new segments of the population that they're deeply invested in the continued existence of museums. If talking families through the technology and technique of the games they play regularly as a way to get kids interested in art, that seems like a win, though it's entirely dependent on how well the exhibit comes together. The Smithsonian may be overcompensating to reach these end goals, and the result may be a bad exhibit, but I don't think the sense that the Smithsonian needs video games—and by extension, needs new, committed audiences—is wrong.