A Century of Vintage Board Games at the San Francisco International Airport (PHOTOS)

You wouldn't ordinarily think of an airport as a venue for an art exhibition, and if you did, that exhibition probably wouldn't be all about antique board games. But that's exactly what's so amazing about the latest show at SFO Museum in San Francisco.
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2013-03-30-snake200.jpgYou wouldn't ordinarily think of an airport as a venue for an art exhibition, and if you did, that exhibition probably wouldn't be all about antique board games. But that's exactly what's so amazing about the latest show at SFO Museum in San Francisco.

Let's Play! 100 Years of Board Games is a tribute to a form of old-fashioned recreation inside a technological hub, the San Francisco International Airport. Seeing as how SFO Museum is the world's only accredited museum inside an airport, it's interesting to note that the subject of its most recent exhibition is neither straight-up fine art nor technological in nature, but that's part of the mission behind SFO Museum, which opened in 1980 in order to "humanize" the airport environment.

While Let's Play! reminds us of our roots in gaming before the advent of the PS3, Wii or the Xbox 360, it also calls attention to the subject of leisure in a place that is by definition anything but leisurely, offering a form of diversion from the monotony of waiting to board a plane.

Curator of Let's Play! 100 Years of Board Games, Nicole Mullen offers lots of insight on the individual games and the exhibition in general:

For those ticketed passengers traveling, they will have the unique opportunity to view Victorian era board games that are quite different from what we think of as board games today. Early board game graphics, unlike today's games, display a vibrant chromolithography printing process introduced in the late 1800s. The goal of many games involved teaching moral lessons. The Checkered Game of Life challenged players to choose virtue over vice: landing on bravery sent the player to honor, ambition led to fame, while idleness resulted in disgrace. In 1960, The Checkered Game of Life became The Game of Life. The object of the game completely changed. Instead of acquiring virtue, the player who "retires" with the most money now wins the game. Popular twentieth-century board games that viewers may remember playing are also on display such as Barbie: Queen of the Prom, Captain Video, the Nancy Drew Mystery Game, Clue and Monopoly.

Since the exhibition is past airport security, you'll need to be flying Virgin America or American Airlines in order to see it. SFO Museum does have special passes for the general public, but you'll need to contact the museum to make advance arrangements and go through the general security line as though you were flying. Fortunately, if you're not in San Francisco, you can still see some of the items from the exhibit right here.

Game of the Telegraph Boy (1888)

100 Years of Board Games

Originally published on Pop Curious. "Let's Play! 100 Years of Board Games" is on view at SFO Museum until May 20, 2013. All photographs are courtesy of SFO Museum.

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