The art arcade: MoMA collects 40 years of innovative design

The exhibition also includes what is effectively a small arcade: a hallway filled with classic Atari games, from Asteroids to Pong. The games are displayed on screens set just slightly into the wall — though there's no frame around them, they're given the same tasteful display, spacing, and plaque that any classic painting might. Naturally, you can play them too.

MoMA has been collecting video games for several years now, and they’ve come to look quite natural alongside more traditional works of art. In this case, the Atari works are featured for pushing forward a particular medium — Asteroids, for example, is noted for its early use of vector graphics. Elsewhere, the new collection also features Minecraft, pointing toward its algorithmically generated worlds that make no two players' experiences alike.

"Times change but human nature doesn't that much."

A large portion of the new collection has a similar focus, highlighting how interaction and design have evolved alongside one another. Largely, everything else in the collection plays off of that by utilizing digital tools in their creation and conception or by taking pragmatic objects and displaying them as traditional art.

One series of works highlights how digital tools have aided in the recreation of natural forms: a chair with joints modeled after bones, a wooden sculpture that recreates a detailed scan of a scorpion's paw. Another highlights objects involved with violence, presenting a drone and a tool used for de-arming minefields as though they were traditional pieces in an installation. "They're beautiful objects with tragic roles," Antonelli says.

Without question, these objects can feel disconnected within MoMA's new collection, as their aim is to highlight the museum's newer works — not to tell a strict narrative. "Sometimes," says Antonelli, "it's better to give more breadth and not connect the dots in ways that people can connect themselves."

But nonetheless, there's still a story buried there that highlights how design has persisted and evolved across decades and centuries. "Times change but human nature doesn't that much," Antonelli notes. "There are some immutable ideas in design, and some that change a lot."

Above: Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition. Yoshiki Okamoto, Akira Yasuda, Capcom, 2003 (originally released as Street Fighter II: The World Warrior in 1991).