“well for starters this isnt the mona lisa” : Virtuella reproduktioner av verkliga konstverk på museet i Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Sammanfattning: In this thesis I conduct a study on the real-world artworks exhibited in the museum in the Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The in-game museum features an art exhibition consisting of virtual recreations of 43 different artworks from the 19th century all the way back to ancient times. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the museum as a phenomenon is portrayed in the game, as well as how the experience of seeing an artwork in the virtual world differs from seeing it in the real world. To investigate this, I carry out an autoethnographic exhibition analysis as well as four “walk-alongs” with informants I invited to visit the museum on my island in the game. Using terms from Torsten Hägerstrands model of time geography I divide the exhibition into different “stations” in order to examine how the artworks are placed in relation to one another. The exhibition and my informants’ museum visits are then analysed with the help of Antonio M. Battro’s extension of André Malraux’s theory of the imaginary museum, Regina Bendix’ definition of authenticity, and Walter Benjamin’s theory on the mechanical reproduction’s effect on authenticity. Furthermore, I make use of Pierre Bourdieu’s terms cultural capital and habitus to highlight how the informants’ individual differences and prior relations to museums affect their experiences. Through my analysis, I find that while the game gives a familiar, traditional portrayal of the museum as a space, it fails to replicate the artworks’ authenticity, and seeing the artworks in this environment is to some extent comparable to looking up images of them on the Internet. At the same time, however, this museum is an example of the evolution of the imaginary museum and how today’s technology allows globally acclaimed artworks and objects of culturally historical significance to be displayed in a new way for more to see.