Berlin’s latest attraction: The Computer Game Museum

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re under thirty, computer games have always been a part of your life, but for us old farts wise elders, we remember the first time we took hold of a joystick and moved a spaceship through an asteroid field, or ran a ravenous little yellow circle around a maze while being chased by ghosts. If you’re under twenty, you probably don’t even know what games I’m talking about.

Here’s your chance to learn. The Computer Game Museum has just opened in Berlin. The Computerspiele Museum, as it’s called in German, presents the history of gaming from its early days on room-sized computers in the 50s and 60s, through the arcade craze of the 80s and on up to today. There are even experimental installation pieces examining possibilities for the next generation of gaming, such as RaveSnake, an eight-player game controlled by cell phones via Bluetooth. The developers call this a new genre of “party games for the sidewalk.”

The museum has an archive of about 14,000 games, and some are set up so visitors can play them. According to a detailed article by Deutsche Welle, this is the second incarnation of the museum. It was previously open for a few years in the 90s before shutting down. In following years it created temporary exhibitions for other museums until it got a space of its own and opened on Friday.

In case you’re wondering, the screenshot is of Pong, a table tennis simulator that was one of the earliest games available to the general public, being released in 1972. That’s before even my time!

[Photo courtesy user Bumm13 via Wikimedia Commons]

First gay museum in the U.S. opens in San Francisco

by Sean McLachlan on

Less than a month after President Obama repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, the U.S. has gotten its first gay museum. The GLBT History Museum is located in the Castro District of San Francisco. Run by the GLBT Historical Society, it features 1,600 sq. ft. of exhibition and activity space.

Yesterday was its grand opening and visitors got to see two exhibitions: Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating GLBT History and Great Collections of the GLBT Historical Society Archives.

The GLBT Historical Society has some history of its own. It was founded in 1985 and has one of the largest archives of its kind. Currently there is only one other gay museum in the world. The Schwules Museum in Berlin is the first museum dedicated exclusively to GLBT history. It had its first exhibition in the Berlin Museum in 1984 and moved to its own space in 1985.

[Photo courtesy GLBT Historical Society ]

Bogota: Hernan Diaz retrospective

by Alex Robertson Textor on


Fernand Léger’s map of Colombia.

If for some reason you need another reason to visit Bogotá soon, here it is. There is currently a retrospective of the late famed Colombian photographer Hernán Díaz on display in Bogotá.

Hernán Díaz is a Colombian treasure. The photographer, who passed away in November 2009, was loved for his portraits of Colombian artists and other important cultural figures. There are the labored, precise photographs of his own cohort of artists, besuited men who reveal little. Then there are the more joyful images of actors, artists, politicians, and other figures from the artist’s later years.

Some credit Díaz with single-handedly raising the profile of Cartagena among Colombians. Prior to the publication of a book in 1972 by Díaz on Cartagena’s people and sights, the city had little standing in the country. It was simply a neglected colonial city on the country’s sweltering Caribbean coast, a forgotten backwater. Díaz considered Cartagena his adopted home and spent a great deal of energy documenting it.

To round out the focus on Colombia and various forms of documentation, there is also a set of male nudes included in the exhibit. Lastly, there are a number of images of a vanquished New York City, including one of a Horn & Hardat food service automat.

Anyone visiting the city shouldn’t miss the opportunity to obtain a look at modern Colombian history. This intense retrospective of Hernan Diaz’s works at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá is open through January 15.

Las Vegas’ Neon Boneyard to open museum and public park this year

by McLean Robbins on

Have you ever wondered where Las Vegas‘ famed flashing marquees go to die? It’s no ordinary graveyard. The self-described “Neon Boneyard” of Las Vegas is a little-known spot housing memorablia from imploded casinos, soon to become a museum and public park.

First opened in 1996, the Neon Museum is a nonprofit organization whose missiom is to to “collect, preserve, study and exhibit neon signs and associated artifacts to inspire educational and cultural enrichment for diverse members of our international community.”

Just finding the Boneyard requires some planning, it’s about a $20 cab ride past the pawn shops, mini malls, and clubs of Girls, Girls, Girls.

Don’t expect everything to be aglitter when you arrive … this isn’t The Strip. The signs are unlit, many showing the dusty patina of age. (Naturally, this will change when the museum opens.)

But that doesn’t stop curious visitors – and many a just-married couple – from snapping photos in front of their favorite wedding chapel sign. “Old Timers” will also enjoy the relics – marquees from casinos long imploded to make room for new megoliths, a collection of historic Freemont street memorabilia and even a few culturally significant donations. One of the Boneyard’s highlights is relics the genie lamp from the hotel where Elvis married Priscilla Ann Wagner.

Another Peek: See what one of our Gadling staffers thought about the museum on a recent trip.

The Neon Museum is rehabilitating the historic La Concha Motel lobby for use as its Visitors Cente. La Concha, which was dismantled and moved to the “Boneyard” for use, is a large shell-like structure. It was designed by famed African-American architect Paul Revere Williams. Several active signs throughout Las Vegas have also been pledged to the museum once they’re retired.

As reported in AOL Travel, the three-acre lot currently open by appointment only. Tickets, which must be reserved two weeks in advance for the twice-daily tour, cost $15. The museum’s new admission structure has yet to be announced, but is likely to be much more accessible.

[Flickr via S.MiRK]

The Visigoths: Spain’s forgotten conquerors

by Sean McLachlan on

When most people think of the fall of the Roman Empire, they think of hordes of howling barbarians swarming over the frontier and laying waste to civilization. That’s only partially true. In reality, many tribes were invited, and even those that weren’t came with their families not just to conquer, but to settle. This is why historians prefer the term “Migration Period”. And although these tribes conquered, the Romans ended up changing them more than they changed the Romans.

Take the gravestone pictured here, for instance. The product of “barbarians” who had taken Spain, it has Christian symbolism and is written in Latin. It reads, “Cantonus, servant of God, lived 87 years. He rested in peace on 22 December 517 AD.”

The Visigoths spread over much of the western Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Their attacks prompted the emperor Honorius to withdraw his legions from Britain so he could get reinforcements, but this didn’t stop the Visigoths from sacking Rome itself in 410 AD. Like other Germanic tribes, they came to settle, and eventually moved as far as southern France and Spain. There they took over the government but left the society pretty much intact. Roman bureaucrats still ran day-to-day affairs. The Visigoths were already Christian like most Romans by this time, and since they lacked a written language they started using Latin.

Their kingdom lasted from 475 to 711, when they were defeated by the Umayyid Muslims. That’s a long time, but the Visigoths have basically become the Invisigoths, a forgotten people sandwiched in time between the Romans and the Moors. Why? Because they had little effect on the people they ruled. The Iberian Romans continued pretty much as they were, developing from the crumbling Classical era into the Early Middle Ages. These Ibero-Romans vastly outnumbered their Visigothic rulers. The only Visigothic word to make it into Spanish is verdugo, which means “executioner”.

If you look hard enough, you can still see traces of the Visigoths. Four of their churches still stand, two in Spain and two in Portugal. One of the best is San Pedro de la Nave near Campillo, Spain. Two shots of this church are in the gallery. Bits of other buildings have been incorporated into later structures. In Mérida, a Moorish fortress called the Alcazaba uses a bunch of pillars taken from a Visigothic hospital. They’re shown in the gallery too. The Visigoths had a distinct artistic style of carvings in low relief, showing plants or animals or people in Biblical or battle scenes. The Visigothic Museum in Mérida has an excellent collection of these.

The Germanic tribes were also good at making jewelry, and the Visigoths were no exception. They liked huge, intricately carved pins called fibulae to hold their cloaks, and wore bejeweled belt buckles big enough to make any Texan proud. Several of their chunky gold crowns also survive, with the names of their kings spelled out in gold letters hanging like a fringe around the edge.

So when visiting Spain’s many museums and historic sights, keep an eye out for remnants of Spain’s underrated rulers!

Don’t miss the rest of my series: Exploring Extremadura, Spain’s historic southwest

Coming up next: The wine and cuisine of Extremadura!

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