Play is not a word museums are used to saying out loud. We often reach for knowledge, stewardship, criticality. Serious words, fitting for a world that is in a genuinely serious state right now. But play is not the opposite of seriousness and it is not in complete denial or ignorant of reality.

Design, architecture and digital culture—the three disciplines

Nieuwe Instituut is committed to—exist, at their core, to imagine other worlds. Imagining has never been a strictly serious act. Depth and delight are not in competition. Knowledge without the ecstatic, however important it is, is rarely taken home by museum visitors.

This isn't new territory for us. Our current show 'SIDELINED' looks seriously at queering the playing fields of sports. 'Worldglimpsing', our upcoming exhibition, invites visitors to roleplay, fashioning and shaping alternate worlds via tabletop gaming and live-action-roleplay.

If depth so often fails to stick without play attached to it, why do museums keep treating play as the lesser of the two? It's time we let more of it in.