MOMA.ORG CONTINUES TO GROW WITH INNOVATIVE PROJECT
New Web Offerings Geared Toward Scholars, Children, Film Buffs, Shoppers
A new online project allows visitors to The Museum of Modern Art's Web site at www.moma.org to hear contemporary artists discuss their work. Other additions to the site are an online exploration of the Museum's history, an interactive project based on the popular children's book Art Safari, two art works commissioned exclusively for the Web, and a subsite devoted to Alfred Hitchcock. These new features are part of the Museum's commitment to reaching worldwide audiences with its collections, exhibitions, and programs. The Web site now receives an average of 747,000 hits and more than 130,000 visitors per month.
The MoMA Web site has been the recipient of a number of accolades and distinctions. Time Out New York named the Museum's site one of the Top Ten Best Web Sites for 1998 and Shift Magazine named it one of the 100 Best Web Sites. The site was also lauded for educational content and quality by the BBC Education Web Guide. The Art Safari subsite was one of 20 sites recently named "Best of May" by Education World ® Search Engine. Education World also reviewed the project, giving it an A+ rating. Additionally, Online Education, Inc. recently selected Art Safari as one of its weekly Super Sites.
The MoMA site was also chosen to be one of a select number of case studies commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. The study, titled "The Evolution of a Museum Web Site," highlights every aspect of the site's creation: its beginnings, its organizational process, and the challenges the staff faced, as well as lessons learned from the various stages of its evolution. The Web site case study was one of forty, all of which describe the subject's experiences in the nonprofit arts field.
Online Projects: Conversations with Contemporary Artists
The Conversations with Contemporary Artists subsite highlights three artists--Coco Fusco, Gary Simmons, and Kara Walker--each of whom have participated in the Museum's Conversations series. The site offers Shockwave audio clips of each artist's talk, together with transcriptions, images of artwork that coincide with the dialogue, and each artist's résumé. A list of all past participants in the program and a brief history of The Edward John Noble Education Center, where these talks with artists are held, are also offered.
The Museum Archives
The Museum Archives subsite is the most intensive online documentation of the Museum's history to date. In addition to including background information on the Museum Archives, a complete list of its holdings, and procedures for accessing information, the subsite contains eleven highlights from the archives. These range from installation photographs of the Museum's first exhibition in 1929 and an audio clip of a 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt radio address on the re-opening of the Museum, to an excerpt from a 1991 Oral History with architect Philip Johnson and a photograph from the opening of the Museum's Chuck Close retrospective in 1998.
Exhibition Subsite: Alfred Hitchcock
To accompany the Alfred Hitchcock film retrospective and gallery exhibition Alfred Hitchcock: Behind the Silhouette, which opened in mid-April, the Museum has launched a special Hitchcock subsite. Highlights include an illustrated chronology of the filmmaker's career from the 1920s to the 1970s, a complete transcript of a lecture given at Columbia University by Hitchcock in 1939, an extensive interview with the director conducted by Peter Bogdanovich in 1963, a complete filmography of feature films, selected stills, and a full screening schedule for the retrospective.
Exhibition Subsite: The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect
A comprehensive Web subsite accompanies the exhibition The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect, which opened in mid-March. The site includes an introductory text, a selection of twenty-five images of works from the show with commentary, a checklist of all works in the exhibition, and links to information about related public programs.
The Museum as Muse subsite features online works created specifically for the Web by two artists featured in the show. Allan McCollum's online project, The Registration of an Artwork, consists of an exhaustive layer of catalogue information surrounding Collection of Four Hundred and Eighty Plaster Surrogates (1982/89), which is on view in the exhibition. The work was realized in collaboration with Ron Wakkary, and co-produced by The Museum of Modern Art and Stadium. Fred Wilson's online project Road to Victory--titled after the Museum's 1942 exhibition that included photographs of the United States at war--explores The Museum of Modern Art's memory of itself by mining the institution's photographic archive. Constructing narratives through juxtapositions and connections between documentary images and text borrowed from the archive, he reveals much of what, though visible, is not on display: its visitors, its staff, its exhibition graphics, and wall texts.
Conservation Subsite
The Conservation subsite offers information about the Museum's methods of research, processes of restoration, including the identification of materials, as well as other concerns regarding the preservation of works from the Museum's collection. The site includes a detailed account of one of the department's most impressive achievements--the restoration of Claude Monet's famous Water Lilies triptych (c. 1920). The subsite also contains a section titled Jackson Pollock: "No Chaos, Damn It!" developed in conjunction with the Jackson Pollock retrospective, which includes an interactive dissolve between an X-ray of Pollock's 1947 painting Full Fathom Five and an image of the painting itself. An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is also available for those interested in learning about how to preserve their own treasured objects and artworks.
Art Safari
Earlier this year, The Museum of Modern Art launched an innovative Web project for families, co-created by author Joyce Raimondo and producer Elaine Cohen, both of whom are MoMA Museum educators. A series of open-ended questions encourage the investigation of Henri Rousseau's The Sleeping Gypsy (1887), Diego Rivera's Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), Frida Kahlo's Fulang-Chang and Me (1937), and Pablo Picasso's She-Goat (1952). Each work links to related writing and art-making activities where children can recap their responses, and select and manipulate shapes to create animals and fantastical creatures. Children can save their writing and artwork to the site, and then return to it by entering their special Art Safari password. A rotating sample of children's art and writing is displayed in an online art gallery.
The MoMA Online Store
With an increase in the services being offered, The MoMA Online Store has changed its domain name to www.momastore.org. The site has also added a number of features that will make online shopping easier and more fun.
New shopping features include personalization, which allows registered users to choose preferences, bookmark, and view an assortment of gifts. The store also has a shopping tour of best-selling products, allowing users to learn more about, or buy, popular items. Other enhancements are order tracking and order history.
A new service, MoMA "e-cards," accessible from both moma.org and The MoMA Online Store, allows visitors to send free electronic postcards. MoMA currently offers nine e-cards: six well-known works of art from MoMA's collection, and three that are based on products in the store.
MoMA E-News
Online visitors to moma.org or The MoMA Online Store can subscribe to seven different monthly e-mail newsletters: "Product News," "Web site News," "Membership News," "Museum News," "Monthly Calendar," "Lectures and Programs," and "Special Packages."
Site Sponsors
The Museum of Modern Art's Web site is built with an array of technologies that have been combined to give the site its character and utility. The Museum regularly adds to the list of companies that have generously been its partners in the realization of either the subsites or the entire structure of www.moma.org.
We recognize and thank the following companies and individuals for their general support and partnership in the ongoing creation of the MoMA Web site: OVEN Digital for moma.org site consulting and programming; Pixelpark for MoMA Online Store design, development and programming; SOHO Internetwork for RunTime content management software and development; Leonard Riggio; and Robb Waterman.
The Conversations with Contemporary Artists Web site is made possible by the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.
The Museum Archives subsite was generously funded by the Trustee Committee on Archives, Library, and Research.
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect Web site and online artists' projects are made possible by The Contemporary Arts Council and The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art.
FOR SPECIFIC PAGES AND SUBSITES LISTED IN THIS RELEASE
The Museum of Modern Art: www.moma.org
Exhibition Subsites
The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect: www.moma.org/exhibitions/muse/
Alfred Hitchcock: www.moma.org/filmvideo/hitchcock/
Online Projects
Art Safari: www.moma.org/artsafari/
Conservation Department: www.moma.org/collection/conservation/
Conversations with Contemporary Artists: www.moma.org/onlineprojects/conversations/
Museum Archives: www.moma.org/research/archives/overview/html
The MoMA Online Store: www.momastore.org
MoMA E-Cards: moma.e-cards.org
MoMA E-News: www.moma.org/docs/e-news/index.html
BBC Education Web Guide: www.bbc.co.uk/education/webguide
Education World ® Search Engine: www.education-world.com/
Art Safari review: www.education-world.com/awards/
Online Education, Inc.: www.learnersonline.com
National Endowment for the Arts: arts.endow.gov
MoMA Web site case study: arts.endow.gov/pub/Lessons/index.html
