El Tercer Brazo

Going to Indiana

Posted by Steffen Böddeker

Indianapolis is not exactly on the top of my list of places to visit for seeing art, and I suspect that I’m not the only one who would more likely book a trip to NYC. However, if you’re at the computer, as I am, in a place that is neither New York nor Indianapolis, I recommend a trip to the IMA’s new website over most NY museums’ sites. (The big exception here is the Brooklyn Museum, which is always a few steps ahead of the field in regards to online activity - more on this later.)

For quite a while now, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) has been doing what the Whitney Museum failed to realize in its December 2009 website redesign (see earlier post here). While the IMA could easily have been pigeonholed as a regional attraction with limited nation-wide relevance, a powerful online presence gives it a national and international role regardless of its physical location. The museum built something online that wasn’t possible in real space - despite a nice facility on a large campus. (I actually had a chance of seeing this in person when the IMA was one of the host institutions for the 2009 Museums and the Web conference, where I co-presented this paper on the Canadian Centre for Architecture's website redesign.)

The IMA has been a leader in museum transparency, and its website is a key tool for this. It details works sold and bought, energy used, financial statements, staff cuts, etc. Its New Media team has been among the leaders in pushing what museums can do online, and has also integrated this nicely throughout the institution. The Davis Lab is a great model for putting the online world back into the building itself, while founding ArtBabble is an excellent example of investing in new tools to go beyond regional limitations. Creating this platform, along with its growing network of institutional partners, allowed the IMA to offer its resources to a wide audience and therefore position itself in a way that it would be impossible with on-site activities alone.

I would have written positively about the IMA’s online activities a few months (even years) ago as well, but would have stopped short of endorsing its web interface. The homepage especially was maddening with its many unmoored boxes of mini-menus. My favorite thing about the new design is the very straightforward, top-of-screen menu that NEVER CHANGES wherever you are. Well, almost never changes. The otherwise genius Dashbord still has its 1990s interface, all videos are hosted on the "drawn" 1980s ArtBabble interface, and the blog for some (probably technical?) reason also doesn’t have the menu although the page is otherwise integrated and there would be space. And the navigation menu would be worth writing about in itself, because it is like a little website. From (nearly) every page, it gives you the interactive calendar, access to collection search, directions based on your zip code, etc.

Among the highlights is the Calendar, a great dynamic tool that breaks down the museum’s many activities in a simple graphic timeline with text and images below; exhibitions are integrated but clearly distinguished from one-time events. The Collection Search is great but not perfect (see IMA blog entry here) The Magazine is found alongside the Blog under the Interact menu, and indeed it is there for you to browse.

One complaint: Too much space is given to boring images used for decoration. Why do museum websites insist on doing this? I admit to having been responsible for this myself, but that was nearly 10 years ago and by now there must be room for a new model. Especially on the homepage, this leads to a serious lack of hierarchies: a giant image of the building or garden followed by lots of homogenized information. On all other pages, it is also just wallpaper eating up the best screen room.

A question: Why does an art museum have, in third place, a menu for ART? Here, again, I miss some hierarchy. Tell us what this place is really about. The stream is nice in the middle of the homepage, but what about the art?

A comment: Seriously, ArtBabble is an amazing tool/resource with (currently) 22 international collaborators/contributors, and the IMA put that together. My highest compliments for that. The content is excellent, and the way videos are annotated and searchable raises the bar for everyone trying just to keep up posting their lectures on the web. The trouble is that all IMA videos are hosted on this very different interface, where users are dropped from the main site without warning. Regular ArtBabble users will understand what happened, but a casual visitor to the website looking to watch a video advertised on the homepage will either be confused about where the IMA went, or excited by the forward motion of browsing other media.

And a final compliment, among the others already noted above: I’m surprised I like the logo as much as I do, and it may have something to do with the relief at seeing the “Its My Art” tagline gone. Apparently this new design was already introduced in print material a while back, but is only now online. The logo cleverly lets you know right off the bat that Indianapolis is a place - in Indiana. This is especially good branding for people like me, who are just passing through online.