By Max Van Kleek
While the state of the Virtual Guggenheim Museum still remains a
mystery, the Museum of Modern Art has built an impressive array of
features for visitors to its web site, www.moma.org. Moma.org seems
to feature something for just about every audience; from curious child
to seasoned art critic, and maintains the
MoMA style throughout.
All special exhibitions on display at the physical MoMA museum have
online Macromedia Flash counterparts that beautifully organize descriptions
and pictures of all the pieces on view at the exhibit. In particular,
two exhibits that are currently on display have impressive online
portions: Open Ends, and Workspheres. The Open Ends online piece is
a multidimensional hyperlinked tour of all the works in the retrospective
exhibit currently on view at the museum. The Workspheres piece has
an unusual organizing interface that successively reveals diagrams,
photographs and text related to the exhibit.
An Online Projects section is an archive of interactive, web pieces
and little web galleries that were featured for past exhibits. These
range from Michael Craig-Martin's "16 Objects, Ready or Not",
an interactive brightly-colored in-your-face collection of objects
that float about the screen, to dot.jp, an interactive tour through
Japan's digital art scene. All of the pieces are exquisitely designed
and are addictive to play with.
Listings of MoMA's full standard collections of drawings, film, and
video are available, as well as thumbnail images of many of the works.
Additionally, access to theMoMA Library's card catalogue can be done
through the cleverly named online DADABASE.
Educational Resources available for children and classrooms include
the Art Safari, a web site where drawings and paintings made by kids
are posted alongside selected works from the museum's collections.
Another section presents works from the collection and asks kids to
describe their interpretation of the image on a web form. All submissions
are listed with the work, and illustrate kids' appreciation for the
works.
Finally, the MoMA Online Shop provides a near-complete catalog of
what is available for purchase at the actual museum shop. As with
the physical mseum shop, the online store charges premium prices for
most merchandise. One exception are MoMA E-Cards, which are no-fee
personalizable digital greeting cards featuring images of the works
in the museum. Unlike many of the e-greeting cards on the Internet,
MoMA cards are formal enough to send to most colleagues.
While the Museum of Modern Art does not go insofar as to be a digital
art gallery, they have done an excellent job at enhancing their collection
via online guides and references that are very enjoyable to peruse.