An exhibition about board games is set up so the displays make up the board and the day’s patrons become the players. In 20 or so “moves”, visitors to “Game Plan – Board Games Rediscovered” can peruse vitrines presenting recreations older than chess and as new as VR, posters with anecdotes and trivia, some game-related paintings, and even incarcerate themselves in a life-sized Monopoly-style “jail” by hitting a forfeit on one of the giant wall spinners. At the V & A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, ends 23 April 2017.
Game Plan – Board Games Rediscovered
For a few years growing up, we didn’t own a TV, so family game night was our Saturday entertainment. Multi-player card classics such as Canasta and Rummy were a favourite, or for quieter nights, a board game from the cupboard. Last week, I was in Bethnal Green and so, having never been into the V&A Museum of Childhood, quickly popped in… for a 5-minute gander at their board games exhibition, that lasted more than an hour.
My usual m.o. at a new museum or gallery that I’ve never been to is to start from the top and work my way down, and from the upper mezzanine, the place resembles a Santa’s workshop that grew up inside of a train station. As I had only five minutes (an hour), my first move was the “Game Plan – Board Games Rediscovered” exhibition on the top level. To start, visitors are invited to “explore the exhibition by playing a game” so that, if you want, you can “play” the exhibition or just look at it. Someone else was having a turn on the spinner, so I just went in.
“Game Plan” begins with historic entertainments hundreds of years old such as an original version of “Chutes and Ladders” and “Pachisi” both based on classic Indian table games…
There are posters everywhere for visitors to learn about a game’s history, rules, or its original form; there’s even art that captures a moment of tension between opponents:
Throughout there are tidbits of universal truth, like this from Plato:
The exhibition includes near-forgotten parlour games like “Chase the Goose”, amusing aristocrats everywhere since the 1600s, guided by this helpful tip:
“If you don’t want to lose, don’t play”…
As I moved around V&A’s Game Plan “board”, I recognised more family game night favourites: Scrabble, Monopoly, Clue (Clue-do in UK), and the one that nearly destroyed our family in 1984, in a typhoon of angrily flying pie wedges and question cards, Trivial Pursuit…
Let’s leave the past where it is, and keep traveling forwards through time, to look at contemporary electronic past-times such XBox and Nintendo, and up-to-the-minute VR games, like this interactive chess played on a smartphone…
At the end of Game Plan, I felt like a winner, and with that five (20)-minute tour done, it was time to get going.
“OMG, I had one of those when I was [much younger than I am now]!”
…But not before I whizzed through the regular collection one level below. My goodness, has the V&A raided my mother’s attic…because I see all the toys and games I had as a kid are here, among them the infuriating Rubik’s cube, Mastermind, and those cute-ugly troll dolls…
And BARBIE! I feel sorry for her and her friends, trapped behind glass like that, and only one outfit apiece…
I turned a corner and like a tractor beam, a cabinet from a galaxy far, far way trapped me (and two other grown men) for more than 15 minutes in a reminiscence about the various Star Wars action figures and stories that we all lived and breathed every Christmas and birthday in the 1980s…
Vitrines of beautifully displayed vintage nursery and play clothes round out the collection, so that one can just about imagine who played with the antique miniatures and doll houses that my Barbies would have dreamed of living in.
Along with so many splendid treasures in the memory chest, V&A Museum of Childhood offers lots of interactive stations for little ones to open hatches and poke their fingers into, plus plenty of cushy sofas for the grownups to lounge on while the young-uns run around. There’s even an area for dress up and make-believe…
And a display of children’s drawings from the 19th century. So universal is the first language of art, that these could have easily come from the pencil of a six-year-old today.
Right, so my five-minute tour has now been almost two hours, and the only two questions I ask myself now are: (1) how have I been a Londoner for 15 years and never stepped into the V&A Museum of Childhood before today? And (2), what magic lies in this colossal glass imagination box, and how do I get inside?
Recommended for: families and children of all ages; collectors/enthusiasts/hobbyists; people wracked with nostalgia or who need an ardent reminder of what fun looks like
Related stories and links
- Check out V & A Museum of Childhood’s “Board Games Rediscovered” exhibition – open hours, address, related events, and more
Exhibition details: “Board Games Rediscovered” is on at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9PA, from 8 October 2016 to 23 April 2017. Step-free access, free admission (with ample “parking” for prams); cafe on location.
kelise soixante-douze 
