The Average Gamer

Minecraft at the V&A museum

Minecraft VA Sword small

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London celebrates art and design of all types. At the end of every month they hold an event called Friday Late, and August’s was called The World of Minecraft.

In collaboration with Mojang, a series of exhibits popped up around the museum. Artist and prop-maker Greg Aronowitz created beautiful Minecraft versions of 16th-century portrait miniatures, silver swords and a marble sculpt of Steve with his dog.

Publishers Egmont had copies of the upcoming Minecraft Official Beginner’s Handbook on display, as well as a huge pop-up book created especially for the exhibit.

Lead designer Jens Bergensten gave a talk on the art and craft of Minecraft and UN-Habitat speaker Pontus Westerberg spoke about they way Minecraft is now used as a design tool to visualise urban planning. Elsewhere, visitors could watch in-game designs brought to life by Paul Harter’s Printcraft 3D printer.

In the courtyard, a series of blocks showed just how immense a task it would be to live in a world on Minecraft’s scale, while Theo Void performed a set of Minecraft-related songs.

Here’s some of what was on show: