Video Games/Gaming in the Museum

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Benjamin Beil
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548682445

The aim of the project is to research video game exhibitions and related issues of the cultural significance of the video game as a medium, its social and academic perception, its historization and institutionalisation, but also its canonisation and legitimisation: In what ways, in what forms and contexts are video games presented in museums and other exhibition spaces? How do curators and other actors deal with these digital, interactive, unstable artefacts? Which video games are selected as exhibition objects and what history or histories of video games do these collections tell? How are past and present video game histories culturally positioned in temporary and permanent exhibitions in art, technology, local history and specialist museums? What influence do these projects have on the social status of video games and how are they reflected in academic discourses? The focus is not on games or forms of gamification as educational formats, but rather on video games as exhibition objects. The main emphasis will be on exhibitions that explore video games as a popular cultural (mass) medium. This in no way excludes other approaches – e.g. video games as "artistic material" in the field of digital art/media art or games as part of the history of digital technology – but nevertheless sets different research accents. The starting point of the project is the exhibition history of video games in Germany.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants