An Eye on Art: Our Art in Games


In continued celebration of International Museum Day on May 18, we are sharing some favorite works from our permanent collection for you to hang in your own home-- your Animal Crossing: New Horizons™ home, that is! With the help of the Animal Crossing Pattern Tool we were able to digitize artwork from our collection for you to enjoy in-game. To kick off our digital collection, we have selected a few masks from the Dr. Alan and Linda Rich African and Oceanic Art Collection as well as snippets from the long-lost painting at the center of our Von Wagner Code exhibition.

The eagle-eyed among you may notice that a few of the objects you see on display in our makeshift museum are not from the Polk Museum of Art’s collection! Other museums, such as the Met, the Getty, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) have also opened their collections to art loving Animal Crossing players, so we wanted to highlight their masterworks as well.

If those links to some of the world’s greatest museums don’t offer enough art for your Animal Crossing home, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) may be able to help; this list presents museums and cultural heritage institutions from all across the globe who have shared works from their open-access collections for everyone to enjoy.

And if that’s STILL note enough: In collaboration with The Shop, we were even able to create a Polk Museum of Art logo t-shirt for you to show your support for the Museum while you visit other islands!

Now, go on and curate your own dream art collection!


Activity

Adding our art to your Animal Crossing New Horizons™ Game

What you’ll need

  • Nintendo Switch with Animal Crossing: New Horizons

  • Nintendo Switch Online Account and services

  • Nintendo Switch Online app (available for iOS and Android) to scan the QR codes

  • Internet connection

Directions

  1. Open the Nintendo Switch Online app on your smart device and select Animal Crossing: New Horizons™.

  2. Select the “Designs” icon in the NookLink menu and follow the in-app instructions on how to scan a QR code.

  3. Now that you have our design scanned in, save it in the app.

  4. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons™, open the “Custom Designs” app on your Nook Phone and press (+) to download our design.

  5. Save the design to an empty Design Pattern and you are now ready to display-- hang these pieces on your walls, on easels around your island, or even on your clothes!

  6. Repeat steps 2-5 to get the rest of our designs in your game and curate to your heart's content.

Note: The t-shirt design will require you to have unlocked the Pro Designs menu, while the rest of our designs will appear in the basic Custom Designs menu.

Share and tag YOUR personally curated museum with the hashtag #PMoAatHome!


In-game photos curated and taken by Miriam (Mimi) Gaudet, Retail & Visitor Experience Associate

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo Co., Ltd. or Nintendo of America Inc. Animal Crossing™ and Nintendo Switch™ are trademarks of Nintendo.