Thesis Project

24 weeks
COMMEMORATION

Tools
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign

Commemoration

Commemoration is an art trivia board game that uses questions cards to teach players about art, keeping its history alive and ensuring that the artworks are never truly lost if we take the time to learn about them.

Win or lose, all players will gain a higher understanding and increased knowledge of art history, and the importance of remembering and history.

A painting speaks a thousand words, and Commemoration is full of stories.

How can designers preserve stolen art and keep it’s image and historical significance alive? And possibly work the story of it being stolen into the history of the art?

The goal of this project is to keep the history of art that has been stolen alive, to not erase their stories even though they can no longer be seen. Currently, museums and galleries prefer to hide when art is stolen, hoping they fade from the public eye naturally as only 3% of art thefts are registered with the Art Loss Register (ALR) and Interpol (Durney & Proulx, 2011, p. 121). I believe the story of how and why valuable art was stolen should be worked into its history, making it more famous, not making it cease to exist.

My research examines goals, outcomes, factors that lead to their success or failures, as well as what we can learn from art heists around the world involving works by the great masters including Rembrandt, Picasso, and Braque throughout history. The theft of 13 artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18th 1990 is the main case study. Other case studies include the theft from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 1993, the 2010 heist from Paris’s Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville, and the Louvre heist of the Mona Lisa in 1911.

Most notably of these secondary case studies, in the context of Commemoration, is the stealing of the Mona Lisa in 1911 from the Louvre by Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia. The mystery had everyone talking about DaVinci’s masterpiece, contributing to its popularity and working the story of its tragic disappearance into the history of the painting, turning the Mona Lisa the famous wonder it is today.

View the Instruction Manual and learn how to play here!

Inspired by the world's largest property theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 18 1990, Commemoration follows the theme of this story, one of hope in times of tragedy. 13 works of art were stolen that night, some of which you will learn about in Commemoration. These art pieces, full of value, history, and culture, were cut from their frames in the middle of the night and taken by thieves. The empty frames still hang in the museum today, awaiting the hopeful return of the lost artwork.

Click here for a more indepth explanation of what happened on the night of March 18th 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

“But the truth is, those missing things still have power.”

- Stephanie Storey, Art Historian

The board game approach is meant to educate users in a fun and engaging way. The questions vary in difficultly level, making it able to be enjoyed by players of varying art knowledge backgrounds.

When I studied art history, I had a never ending pile of flash cards. I always wondered if there was a more engaging way to learn the information I was interested in, especially in middle school and high school, which is why I took this approach.

The Future of Commemoration

I wanted Commemoration to capture art from all around the world and throughout all of time. Unfortunately, this isn’t something I could do, as I wanted it to be based on knowledge that North Americans would already have an idea about. The future of Commemoration has expansion packs for different cultures, time periods, as well as different art heists that were covered in my research.