• by Christine Champagne , July 14, 2009

MoMA modernizes its Web presence with bold strokes

Art museums have got this look-but-don't-touch policy, which is understandable - they can't just let the patrons manhandle the masterpieces. But it can make art appreciation a rather formal, distant and even intimidating exercise.

To its credit, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has traditionally been friendlier than other museums. That said, it's probably best not to caress - even gently - the water lilies in Claude Monet's "Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond" the next time you visit the museum.

While MoMA's midtown Manhattan location was rebuilt in the early 2000s, reopening in 2004, the museum's Web site has just recently undergone its first redesign in five years.

One of the goals of the redesign, according to Allegra Burnette, MoMA's creative director for digital media, was to make visitors feel more a part of the MoMA experience and allow them to make their voices heard.

A sampling of the new moma.org's features: Visitors to the site can plan visits to the museum through the use of interactive calendars and maps, and collect and share images of artwork. In the social networking space, they can also upload pictures from museum visits to Flickr and potentially see them appear on moma.org.

Moma.org's navigation has also been streamlined and a new MoMA Voices section has been added to the site, featuring audio commentaries, film trailers and short videos on exhibitions that can be shared and discussed.

Burnette's favorite feature is the collection widget that appears throughout moma.org, offering visitors a look at a different work in the collection each time it pops up. "I learned so much about what was in the collection that way," says Burnette, who thought she'd seen it all after seven years at the museum.

Everyone's a critic, of course, especially when it comes to art, and OMMA gave a trio of art-oriented, digital media experts - Joanna Champagne (no relation to the writer of this piece), chief of Web and new media initiatives at the National Gallery of Art; Jim Richardson, founder/managing director of Sumo, which specializes in design for the arts and cultural sectors; and Robert Little, art director at interactive design agency Tuft and Co. - the opportunity to critique moma.org.

OMMA: What do you think of the grid-style home page with the rotating images?
Champagne: It's a gorgeous page. It's radically different from the home page they had before [the redesign], which was a long list of information. Now they've made it into a fun, clickable space.
Richardson: It's really nice. It's very visual, it animates, and there are always new pictures coming in. You get the impression that there are lots of exciting things happening at the museum, and you want to click through.
Little: I love it when it first starts, and then it gets a little distracting for me. There is quite a bit of stuff cycling on this page. I think they're trying to do too much with it.
OMMA: Is it unique for a museum site to give visitors so much control?
Champagne: It's not a new trend. But what's new about it on MoMA's site is that moma.org allows you [to] not only create your own collection, but they've let you take the experience and share it through the third-party applications.
Richardson: There are still limitations. For example, I can select an artwork and comment on it, but that's something that I can only share with my friends. It's not something that appears on moma.org, which I think is something they should consider. Then it becomes a Web site where people can debate about art.
OMMA: Moma.org offers social networking through multiple parties, including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. Are other museums this active in the social networking space?
Champagne: The Walker [Art Center], the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum are the ones that really started this, but what's different about moma.org, in terms of social networking, is they not only have the most extensive reach when it comes to third-party sites, but they also have this really cohesive design aesthetic that they carry through from Facebook to Flickr. So even if you go to another site, you're still very much aware of the MoMA brand.
OMMA: Does the museum run the risk of annoying people with Twitter?
Little: As long as their voice on Twitter is supplying interesting information, whether it be about new things coming up at MoMA or perhaps links of interest in the wider art community, I think it's a good initiative.
OMMA: What do you think about the quality of the audio and video content in the MoMA Voices section?
Richardson: I like the video of the MoMA employee who cartwheels through the museum. It's really fun, and you wouldn't expect it. It's quite flippant. Can you believe someone is doing cartwheels next to these artworks that are worth millions and millions of dollars? It's the kind of thing that I could see forwarding on to friends - it's very viral.
OMMA: Is it easy enough to find things on moma.org?
Little: It can be a little bit difficult to find out what is on view. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is very clear about laying out the exhibitions based on time lines. On moma.org, I click on Exhibitions and I get this big fancy-looking grid, which is nice, but it can be difficult to tell when things end and what's coming up soon without dealing with the smaller links, and manually reading each piece of text.
OMMA: How would you rate the moma.org redesign overall?
Champagne: Very successful. They have done very well what many of us struggle with, and that's making the museum more approachable.
Little: The home page and the exhibition experience could be improved, but overall, it's a success. It is certainly opening up the idea that the museum site is more than just a place to go to find out when I can go to the museum, how to get there and what's on display.
Richardson: They've raised the bar. There are a lot of good museum and gallery sites - the Brooklyn Museum has been leading the way - but I think MoMA has gotten ahead here. The MoMA site does a lot of the same things the Brooklyn Museum site does with social interaction and interactive exhibitions, but moma.org is a lot slicker. And comparing this site with the Tate site, it looks like Tate is five years behind. I think a lot of museum sites will be updated because of this.