At 5:00, the warning comes over the PA.
“The museum will be closing in 30 minutes.”
The gift shop’s grate is half-lowered. The art students finish their sketches. Parents collect their protesting children. Couples finish their coffees at the cafe and offer to walk one another home.
By 6:00, the halls are empty.
By 7:00, everyone in the back has wrapped up their work, rushing home for dinner.
Then it’s just the security guards on rounds with their flashlights, but it’s not a hard job—their cameras pick up any movement at floor-level, and it’s not like anyone can sneak in and go about the museum without touching the floor, is it? This isn’t Mission Impossible.
But they know better. And they’re waiting.
The minutes tick by... the hours...
Somewhere, a clock clicks over to 11:00. But they can’t see it. They don’t go by a clock. All the artworks in the museum know is that for the next two hours, they are awake.
Pictures in an Exhibition is a video-chat LARP / Tabletop game for up to seven players. In the game, you’ll select a type of artwork and costume yourself and your background to portray that work. You’ll spend three session acting out the artwork coming alive for a two hour period each night, spread out over three acts. The game asks big questions about what art really is, what it means to be human, how to value creation... and also if those portraits in the French wing will ever shut up about how fancy they are.
A great game if you like art history, or even just Night At The Museum or the 2020 painting recreation trend!