Art Imitates Life

A Logistics Board Game

Spring 2019 | New Haven, CT
Yale School of Architecture
Critic: Jesse LeCavalier

In 2012 LACMA shipped Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” from the outskirts of LA to the city center. The shipment required a customized route accounting for bridge height, street weight-load, and tractor-trailer turning radius. The object’s outsized dimensions determined the logistics strategy. Levitated Mass illustrates the opaque and convoluted networks that determine the consumption of art both by collectors and the general public. These networks include physical display, storage, shipping, insurance requirements, and tax considerations.

A board game, The Life of Art, simulates these networks, shedding light on the logistical chaos that is embedded within each piece of art. The board game format playfully imitates the distance relationships that many collectors have with their art, tracking assets that move between storage facilities with checklists, thumbnail images, and ledgers.

A compilation of the class’s work can be found at Landscapes of Fulfillment.