Always defying norms of museum propriety, Arnold Lehman has outdone himself in outrageousness with one of the final exhibitions opening under his transformative 18-year directorship at the Brooklyn Museum (ending on Aug. 31).
I’m not talking about Sneaker Culture (although it’s more a popular than scholarly success), but the astounding display that opened on the same floor at the same time—FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds (to Oct. 4).
Installed in a gallery adjoining the hightops is a low point in museum spectacle: a fully equipped game parlor and video arcade, masquerading as “an interactive installation” of retrofitted foosball tables, pinball machines and video games that are “simultaneously sculptures and functioning.”
This “Deluxx Fluxx Arcade” is a collaboration between the Brooklyn-based artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller of FAILE and another Brooklyn artist, Bäst:
As you can see above, this youth-oriented alternative to the museum’s boringly non-interactive masterpieces of world culture failed to attract much attention during the press preview, although there were a few who couldn’t resist a spin:
The joint should be jumping tonight, when visitors can “head up to the FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade for a one-of-a-kind video game tournament.”
Not only is Brooklyn’s game palace fully functional, but it’s not pay-to-play. Gamers ordered by their parents to get away from their digital activities and play outside, but eager to avoid such tiring summer activities as hiking, biking and baseball, can hang out instead under the neon and work the machines all day, free of charge. You can purchase tokens as souvenirs, but you don’t need them to operate the games. (Admission to the museum is admirably free for those 19 and under; for others, there’s a “suggested” contribution amount.)
I’ll grant, for sake of argument, that game design can be an art. I’m aware that the Smithsonian American Art Museum provocatively exhibited five playable games in its 2012 Art of Video Games show. But Brooklyn has taken this to a whole new (and to my mind, unacceptable) level of slacker tackiness.
The wall text tells us that although this is “the fifth iteration” of the Brooklyn artists’ “nostalgic nod to video arcades as well as to punk rock and graffiti culture,” this is (unsurprisingly) “the first time it will be installed in a museum context”…
…and hopefully the last (unless there’s a gamers’ museum somewhere that I’m blissfully unaware of).
Okay, okay. I think I’ve just won the Hilton Kramer Award for Old Fogey-ism: Although I played a fair share of pinball in my youth, I’m not the target audience for the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. The young women who came in right behind me when I ventured into the introductory foosball room were wowed, as you will hear in my CultureGrrl Video, below.
I’ll stop my grousing now and let you experience the immersive environment for yourself: