Minecraft at MoMA, Barbie Dreamhouse Paint, and More Finds

When MoMA announced it would start collecting video games a decade ago, “all hell broke loose,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the museum. in a TED Talk on Acquisitions. Reviews doubted if video games love SimCity2000 and Minecraft were a high form of creative expression, and there were complex negotiations with game designers and distributors about how to preserve and collect what essentially amounts to thousands of lines of source code. Since 2012, MoMA has acquired 36 games as part of a broader collection strategy around interactive design, and these are the subject of “Never Alone: ​​Video Games and Other Interactive Designs“, on view in the museum’s public gallery from September 10 to July 16, 2023. “Interactive design is so present in our lives, from video games to the MetroCard machine, to ATMs and government websites“, said Antonelli during a guided tour of the exhibition. “We believe that our job as curators is not to tell people what is good and what is bad, but to help them create their own critical sense and become aware of their surroundings so they can be more powerful citizens, push back and demand better.” The exhibit, which includes ten playable games, shows how designers are coaxing players across the worlds that they create on a screen and ultimately invites us to think critically about how we experience all digital interfaces and our interactions with them – especially as companies like Meta continue to force their version of the ‘metaverse’ onto we.

“Drawings You’ve Never Seen”, a new exhibition at Collective Egg‘s Tribeca showroom, spotlights the private sketches and doodles of 30 artists and designers, including Lindsey Adelman, Liam Lee, Simone Bodman-Turner and Faye Toogood. The idea of ​​“drawing” is interpreted loosely in the exhibition, which also includes paper, clay and wooden models. “Not only is it interesting to see this direct expression of the artist’s spirit, but no one can see that“, explains the commissioner of the program, Rodger Stevens. “There’s a lot of genius and artistry on the way to the piece for public consumption.” For example, Stevens refers to Tyler Hays, the founder of the furniture company DBDW, who usually “turned it all around and refined it, but he’s scribbling all these weird creatures all the time and texting them to me,” Stevens says. As well as more technical and precise drawings of furniture components on graph paper, Hays’ contributions also include a playful sketch of a soldier jumping over a landmine and a nude seated on a tree branch, which reveal a side less serious of the designer. It took a lot of persuading for the artists to open their notebooks, but the community spirit emerging from the pandemic eventually outweighed any shyness. By appointment, until November 4.

object and thinga design and art fair, has found a niche by exhibiting in houses with remarkable architecture, such as the House of Noyesthe Luss Houseand Madoo, the former residence and studio of Robert Dash. (A generic white box gallery is nothing compared to the intimacy of walking through someone’s time-worn, custom-designed space.) latest exhibition of furniture and art takes place in the Pink House, the Ridgewood, New Jersey, home of the late landscape architect James Rose. He designs his house as a small village – with a studio, a main house and a guest house inspired by Japanese architecture and made from reclaimed materials – that nestle in the landscape. The exhibition, co-organized with Green River Project, brings works by Hugh Hayden, Charles and Ray Eames, Frances Palmer and Michelle Oka Doner, among others, alongside Rose’s own possessions. Until October 2.

Photo: Jenny Holzer

While the recent stabbing of Salman Rushdie and the Las Vegas Murder Review-Journal journalist Jeff German spectacle, the necessary work of journalists and writers too often comes up against violence and repression. Next week, Jenny Holzer will present “speech itself“, an outdoor public installation that celebrates the right to speak, read and write freely by projecting a series of quotes from famous authors on freedom of expression on Rockefeller Center. The exhibition pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of PEN America, a group that, through its campaigns, defends the fundamental right to be able to communicate without fear. The screenings take place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. from September 14 to 18.

Photo: Maggie Shannon

Barbie is simply everywhereof Barbiecore Interiors in the future Barbie movie directed by Greta Gerwig and an ever-increasing number of fashion collaborations. After the depressing solemnity of recent years and the beige that went with it, his brightly colored world feels like a welcome break. And now, a collaboration between Mattel and Background paint offers three new colors – Barbie pink, blue and purple – in honor of the Dream house‘s 60th anniversary this year. While one can only dream of owning a three-story house with a swimming pool, waterslide and rooftop terrace, at least the colors (matching the current theater) are quite feasible.

Photos: Courtesy of Gabriel & Guillaume.

Photos: Courtesy of Gabriel & Guillaume.

Vince Palacios, a potter based in Los Angeles, compares his creative process to that of a comedian: “There are ideas, techniques and fixed expectations; however, every time you create or play, something new emerges,” he says. “What interests me the most are the things that emerge in the moment. Unexpected, surprising, most often uncontrolled. His latest exhibition, “Haptic Memory”, presented at the Upper East Side gallery Gabriel and William, is a reflection on his love of improvisation, with lumpy vessels he describes as “potato trees”. The carvings are coated in striking crackle and creeping glazes, making them feel like otherworldly geological specimens. Until November 10.

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