Judging Category
Basic or Experimental Research
Student Rank
Junior
College
Liberal Arts and Communication
Faculty Sponsor
Caitlan Smith caismith@astate.edu
Description
My project examines how Animal Crossing: New Horizons brings the ancient body into a modern, digital world through its recreations of classical Greek sculptures. In the game, players can collect, study, and display famous works such as the Venus de Milo, Discobolus, and Nike of Samothrace in a virtual museum. These sculptures reveal how the Greeks represented beauty, strength, and divine movement through the human form. By interacting with them in-game, players connect with these ancient ideas of the body in a new way. The game’s system of real and fake artworks also teaches players to look closely and think critically about authenticity and visual details, much like art historians. Through its mix of play and learning, Animal Crossing turns the experience of viewing ancient art into something active and personal. This matters because it connects past and present ways of understanding and representing the human body. My research shows that this digital space becomes a modern version of a museum, where the ancient body, once carved in marble and now rendered in pixels, can be explored, appreciated, and reimagined in a playful, accessible way.
Disciplines
Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kendall, Anna G., "The Digital Museum: Classical Reception in Animal Crossing New Horizons" (2026). Create@State. 32.
https://arch.astate.edu/evn-createstate/2026/posters/32
The Digital Museum: Classical Reception in Animal Crossing New Horizons
My project examines how Animal Crossing: New Horizons brings the ancient body into a modern, digital world through its recreations of classical Greek sculptures. In the game, players can collect, study, and display famous works such as the Venus de Milo, Discobolus, and Nike of Samothrace in a virtual museum. These sculptures reveal how the Greeks represented beauty, strength, and divine movement through the human form. By interacting with them in-game, players connect with these ancient ideas of the body in a new way. The game’s system of real and fake artworks also teaches players to look closely and think critically about authenticity and visual details, much like art historians. Through its mix of play and learning, Animal Crossing turns the experience of viewing ancient art into something active and personal. This matters because it connects past and present ways of understanding and representing the human body. My research shows that this digital space becomes a modern version of a museum, where the ancient body, once carved in marble and now rendered in pixels, can be explored, appreciated, and reimagined in a playful, accessible way.
