The colorful carved wooden whale above is one of more than 5000 objects in the Museum's Collection. You can CLICK on the whale to view detailed photographs of the components of this game, discover how this game was played, who played it, where it was played, and find out about the artist who created the components of the game.
Established in 1971, the Museum is a public institution dedicated to research and the collection, preservation, and exhibition of games and game-related objects from around the world. The Museum Website was begun in 1993 and continues to evolve. On over 700 Webpages, the site includes videos, photographs, diagrams, other graphics, and textual information. New pages are periodically added to the site.
Clicking on one of the Menu items in the left panel will take you to the other pages on the Museum Website.
The Virtual Exhibits item takes you to a clickable list of Webpages about collection objects, such as Boxed Games, Playing Cards, Electronic Games, etc. Pages are organized as "virtual" exhibits. The Museum collection is extensive and the University offers Web viewers access to as much of its collection as current resources will permit. While the collection includes over 5000 objects, not all of these are included on the Website at this time. An "exhibit" will have one or more Webpages concerning the games in a particular category. Nevertheless, a viewer can go directly to a Webpage about a specific game of interest by using the Google Tool Bar at the top of each page, inputting the name of the game, and clicking the "search" button. If a Webpage has been created with an object that has the IDENTICAL name as a viewer has typed into the search box, then they will be taken to the appropriate page.
The Archives item contains scanned documents of published papers by game ethnologists and historians. Many of these include photographs and explanatory diagrams of how certain ethnographic games were played.
About Games includes pages dealing with ethnography, origins, and diffusion of games in general. Answers to general questions which viewers have asked about games are included in this section.
The Museum item includes pages about the "physical" collection rather than the "virtual" one on the Web. These items include pages about the care of the collection objects by Museum personnel. Blank collection catalogue forms like the ones used by Museum personnel are offered in this section as an example for game collectors. The final item concerns conditions for those wishing to copy material from this Website.
Last update August 6, 2009