“Timely” isn’t my favorite descriptor. It’s such a trite word, like we’re trying to persuade somebody to take our hobby seriously. I tend to feel that board games are timely because somebody bothered to create them right now, in this time and place, and the sooner we assume that contemporary objects have contemporary meanings, the better and more durable they become.

Unfortunately for all of us, concentration camps are back in fashion and due process has been downgraded to an inconvenience. These are the years that make art like In the Shadows not only timely but necessary, if only as a reminder that people have, elsewhere and in other times, resisted movements every bit as stupid and cruel as those rolling off their overfed haunches today. Dan Bullock and Joe Schmidt have an eye for such examinations, and In the Shadows is no exception. As models go, the history they display here is both a reminder and a corrective. If only we didn’t need them so badly.

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