For History is Written by the Winners, Brooklyn based handcrafted game designers Fredericks & Mae stage a grand tournament at the Museum of Art and Design. A participatory event that engages this tension between competition and communion, and answers the question of the role of a modern design museum by articulating it as an arena, History is Written by the Winners highlights how museums differ from other cultural instructions, like libraries, in that they, by design, induce growing forms of interaction.  Using Fredericks & Mae's arsenal of games, the Museum will bring visitors into connection, competition, and thrall.  

Revealing a kind of tension inherent in many games: a search for communion via competition, History is Written by the Winners highlights how games are not about work or part of any economic model of production.  Instead, games were created for  human connection.  Whether it is the brotherhood of the team or the collective frenzy of the crowd, players gather outside of work in search of community and closeness.  However, as most games go, at the end, there are winners and losers: a differentiated hierarchy emerges from a once enthusiastic collective.  While hierarchy is anathema for intimacy, history suggests a more elusive truth: a little competition is a good thing.  But history is a story written by winners.