The Louvre-Lens Museum in northern France dedicated an entire day for the first time to video games and digital arts on Saturday, November 22, 2025. Under the evocative title "10th Art: Welcome to Video Games and Digital Arts," the museum hosted an ambitious event featuring conferences, interactive installations, immersive workshops, and special meetings that explored the growing cultural significance of gaming.
Long confined to the entertainment sphere, video games are now establishing themselves as a comprehensive cultural medium that intersects with storytelling, architecture, music, design, science, and human emotions. Through this special day, the museum's team demonstrated their determination to examine the increasing role of digital arts in contemporary society and their relationship with traditional fine arts.
Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens, explained the museum's rationale for hosting such an event. "Art and video games have numerous common points! We can even say that video games are digital arts, because graphic creation is central to them," she stated. "At Louvre-Lens, we love to cross perspectives and disciplines, share voices, and create surprise and the unexpected. The new Gallery of Time presents works that today constitute references for many games – this is what we will show during flash visits, from ancient Egyptian mummies to medieval universes."
The museum created a special "mini Gallery of Time" for video games in the museum hall, designed to showcase the evolution of gaming aesthetics throughout history. This installation served as a counterpart to the regular Gallery of Time, which displays over 5,000 years of art history. The juxtaposition allowed visitors to see direct connections between classical artworks and their modern digital interpretations.
Ténèze emphasized the museum's inclusive approach to art appreciation. "Each person has their own perspective on art, and approaches can be diverse! Video games constitute an entry point to discover artworks – and vice versa! The museum addresses all audiences, and many bridges exist between pop culture and art history," she explained. The director noted that esports generates real enthusiasm among a new generation, making it important for institutions like museums to explore these new territories.
The event featured the Hall of Frames tournament organized by Crédit Agricole Nord de France in partnership with Lille ESport. Renowned streamers participated in the festivities, including Étoiles, who was present during the weekend, and TPK, both of whom have demonstrated their affinities with art. TPK collaborated with the museum's cultural mediators to create video capsules featuring works from the Gallery of Time with "geek" references, while Étoiles has previously organized several "nights at the museum" events, including at the Louvre in Paris.
The museum director highlighted what gaming enthusiasts could gain from the experience. "In video games, references to history and art history are infinite – these two universes have never really been disconnected! This event is an opportunity for esports enthusiasts to discover the museum or rediscover it from another angle, and vice versa. It's also an occasion for visitors to learn new practices and sharpen their curiosity," Ténèze stated.
The international scope of the tournament demonstrated the appeal of hosting such competitions in atypical venues like museums. The incredible enthusiasm generated by the tournament announcement among players – including some of the best international competitors from France, Japan, America, and other countries – testified to the interest in welcoming these competitions to cultural institutions.
Ténèze explored the aesthetic connections between traditional art and gaming. "Aesthetics occupy an essential part in the video game universe. Fantasy codes draw their source from medieval Gothic aesthetics, which we find precisely in art venues or in our architecture – cathedrals, castles... In the Gothic exhibition currently presented at the museum, we show, for example, a digital work by contemporary artist Mélanie Courtinat called 'Ten Lands,' which oscillates between video games and interactive music videos, drawing inspiration from these universes."
The director noted that references to art history are abundant in video games, spanning from antiquity to the present day. "It's fascinating to share them with audiences and show how these disciplines nourish each other today," she observed. The Gothic exhibition served as a perfect example of how contemporary digital art can bridge traditional medieval aesthetics with modern interactive media.
Throughout this exceptional day, characters from geek culture engaged in dialogue with the museum's masterpieces. Visitors discovered how virtual worlds reinterpret history, mythology, and classical painting, creating new forms of cultural understanding and appreciation. The event showcased the sophisticated ways that game developers draw inspiration from centuries of artistic tradition while creating entirely new aesthetic experiences.
This inaugural event may well establish the foundation for an annual series dedicated to new visual cultures. The success of the day demonstrated the museum's commitment to exploring the intersections between traditional and contemporary art forms, suggesting that future collaborations between cultural institutions and digital media creators could become increasingly common.
The complete program and additional details about the event are available on the Louvre-Lens official website, reflecting the museum's ongoing efforts to make art accessible to diverse audiences through innovative programming and cross-cultural dialogue.
