More MoMA goodness

Last week I pointed to MoMA's Dali online exhibition - not my cuppa tea artistically, but a lovely site.

So here's another beauty from MoMA: the online exhibition that accompanied the Colour Chart exhibition earlier this year.




Can I email you a link to a page within the site? No. Can I use my best-beloved Picnik plugin to manipulate a screenshot? No. Can I copy & paste text for my personal research use? No. Does it have a purity to its layout, a playfulness to its navigation, and a plain-spoken tone in its language? Oh, yes. Yes it does.

I don't like Dali

But I do like this MoMA online exhibition of his work.

Subject matter and the entry page* aside, it's got a lot going for it. My three favourite things:

1. The opening page. Even if the 'click to navigate' is a bit touchy, it's a lovely way to let people browse the content without having to make any real choices

2. The use of a small number of focus works, flanked by related works. Although the actual show may not have been set out like this at all, it gives a nicely curated feel to the online version.

3. Most of all, the simple and beautiful image enlargements. They're a joy to use.

So, the site has some clunky aspects (like all the navigation instructions - click to open, click to close, click to navigate, click click click). But what I like about MoMA's online exhibitions is that it looks like a designer who loves their job gets to work on them, and it shows.

*I hate entry pages. Honestly - what's it there for? To ask people if they really, really, want to visit your site? Would you stand at the door of your gallery and ask visitors that?

Holding hands with Olafur

More Olafur Eliasson visitor engagement, as the SFMOMA show 'Take your time' tours to MoMA and PS1.

I recently wrote about the SFMOMA experience of trying to get visitors to the show to share and discuss their experiences. At MoMA/PS1, visitors are being invited to apply for a "special cell-phone camera" to hang around their necks. As they walk around the show the cameras take pictures at random intervals, "documenting the visitors' journeys through the exhibition in a candid and experiential way".

Some of the photos are then being incorporated to "appear in the background" of the online exhibition (which is nice, but BEFORE YOU CLICK know that it's a slow loader). I wasn't sure initially what 'in the background' meant, but I think now that it means 'underneath this long piece of expository text'. After a bit of back-and-forward buttoning, I got this page, which shows just the visitor images. (It's not listed in the nav, as far as I can see).

The online exhibition is very beautiful, btw, and has a nifty little feature where when you hover over images it displays the title and the site where the work is on show - subtle, but useful for a multi-site exhibition.

At first, I wasn't sure about this hang around your neck, random timing thing. Why not let visitors decide what to photograph and how? And then I thought, if the whole Eliasson thing is about experiencing the work, having a visitor thinking about documenting the work instead of just being in it constitutes failure (or at least, the failure of the museum to fulfil the artist's intentions).

So I came around, and although I reckon some visitors must be subverting the instructions and pointing the cameras at things they hope to photograph, I like the idea that I'm seeing fragments of people's visits in quite an unmediated way (except - god, it's always except, isn't it? that they're being selected by someone inside the museum. Maybe they could put the whole unfiltered set up on Flickr).

Image
Olafur Eliasson, 1 m3 light, 1999, photograph by Matthew Septimus. From www.ifweranit.com

Cheesecake

Behold: dessert, MoMA-style.



Read the full dining experience over at C-MONSTER.net

Why do I love my feedreader?

Because every week it serves me up a big dollop of Jerry Saltz goodness, without me ever asking.

This week Jerry has reviewed 'Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years' - the show MoMa was made for (perhaps literally).

Buona Serra - Jerry Saltz review, NY Magazine website

And here for your viewing pleasure: a 1 minute super-speed video of the installtion of Serra's works in the MoMA sculpture garden.