Laguna Art Museum lures World of Warcraft fanboys (and Ozzy fans too)

Fanboys and art museums rarely go together, but Orange County's Laguna Art Museum has managed to bridge the gap with its current exhibition devoted to World of Warcraft, the Internet role-playing game that has geeks hooked around the world.

In a move designed to strengthen its ties to the online gaming community even more, the Laguna Art Museum has announced that it's partnering with Blizzard Entertainment (the maker of World of Warcraft) to host a benefit dinner that will include tickets to BlizzCon 2009 in Anaheim.

It should be noted that Blizzard (which is located in Irvine) is one of the sponsors of the museum's exhibition, which features prints and sculptures created by designers from the company's creative team. The show also includes fan art inspired by WoW. Other sponsors of the show are the Samia family and the telecommunications company Tierzero.

The museum says that Blizzard is also sponsoring the dinner but that all proceeds will go to benefit the museum.

The dinner will take place Thursday, Aug. 20, and tickets are a whopping $500. But don't choke on your Mountain Dew: the admission include tickets to the sold-out conference (Aug. 21 and 22) where you can mingle with game developers and other fans. In addition, the dinner includes seats at an Ozzy Osbourne concert taking place on the closing night of  BlizzCon.

Oh, and there's also a two-for-one admission pass for the museum’s exhibition "WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon," as well as autographed artwork from the game.

-- David Ng

Credit: World of Warcraft / Blizzard Entertainment

Comments

[Kim Walters]

As a museum professional I think this is a great pairing. As a parent of a teenage soon obssessed with WOW - tap into the market.

[Donald Frazell]

Soooooo....art is about product and marketing? I know the answer, just waiting for confirmation of what has been obvious for decades. Art ceased dealing with creative arts issues long ago.

art collegia delenda est

ps. give your kid a basketball, at least he will be healthy instead of the toads the Southpark kids became when obsessed by that game. And my eldest graduated Annapolis and applying to med schools. Playing basketball.

[ralf]

This article and the comments i find are very offensive, i play wow and I'm not a geek. Im not good at sports and I'm doing 100% fine, just because you play wow doesn't automatically make you a failure, toad or geek.

[Wallfillers]

I am big fan of video games. i love to play world of Warcraft. No doubt video games do not increase your health as sports do but video games increase visual attention.