Arts Are We Not Seattle? (A Post Sans Images to Make You Feel the Ugliness)
posted by on October 30 at 9:30 AM
Why does it seem like Seattle museum and gallery web sites are in a competition for world’s worst web site?
Art is visual and associative, people. As is the web. They should be natural friends.
Not in this city.
Yesterday, I was scrolling around on Seattle Art Museum’s site when I made a delightful discovery: You can “curate” your own collection online by compiling images, with your “wall label” comments, from the site’s bank of images from the permanent collection. Great, good.
Except that the bank of images is so thin that when I went to do this, I couldn’t get most of the pieces I wanted to use.
There’s not a single page devoted to images of what’s at the Olympic Sculpture Park—there’s an art map, and a list, but no comprehensive series of visuals. And somehow—somehow—when you search for Alexander Calder’s Eagle, the museum’s flagship work of art, all that comes up is a blue box with the word “Eagle” in it.
Is this web site built and maintained by a woodpecker?
Not that anyone else is doing any better. In fact, at least SAM has some of its collection online (and a refreshingly complete set of images from the current Japan Envisions the West exhibition).
The Henry Art Gallery is in the midst of putting its collection online, but there is absolutely nothing there now, in 2007.
There are no slide shows of images accompanying exhibitions (the code for doing this would be approximately as difficult and time-consuming for a web master as the code for the this blog post is for me). There is not even a slide show of images for the permanent James Turrell Skyspace installation. There are no links to reviews about exhibitions, or past reviews, or past images, or artist’s web pages, or gallery sites, or other museums, or other blogs, or … But hey! you say. The Henry has its own blog! True! Yes! I like it!
But good luck finding it from the Henry’s home page.
Then there’s the Frye Art Museum’s web site. Crickets. All the same problems as the Henry, plus that the site’s lead color is vomit brown.
These are dark alleys of the Internet, places you want to get away from as fast as possible, places where you’re liable to see something so ugly that it will make you want to scream.
Are we not Seattle? Are we not the land of technology and honey?
The galleries have plenty of images, but not much information or many links, either. For the most part, their web sites are deadly ugly, and just completely awkward to use.
On Lawrimore Project’s site, every page is a one-million-mile scroll. Platform Gallery is best at the standalone slide show feature—images pop up and are viewable horizontally rather than vertically, but there’s not much more there there. Howard House has one of those useless, I-am-a-logo front pages that requires you to waste your time clicking on it and waiting for the real home page to load. Once that happens, the real home page is so stuffed together, you find yourself longing for the clean emptiness again.
Many of the galleries, unlike the museums, don’t list their future itineraries—I realize things change, but would it kill them? On James Harris Gallery, it’s not pretty, but the information’s mostly all there. Same goes for Greg Kucera Gallery.
Examples abound, but I’ll stop there and pose this question: Is there any Seattle web designer mortified enough to take on this job pro bono? If so, call the Henry. Call SAM. Hell, hack in and fix it up.
Just make it stop.
Coming from someone posting on the UGLIEST WEBSITE EVER!
Jesus, worry about slog's butt-ugliness before talking shit about other people's sites.
Those in glass houses and what not.
DIY:
So if it's possible to scrounge up (or steal, or sneak in and photograph) digital images of the artworks you want to see on the web, and you can research the itinerary and so on, then interested parties could make their own alternative counter web sites of their favorite museum (or least favorite museum web site).
If the museum has a problem with having a shadow web site, it's an opportunity to publicize how much they suck. Seems like kind of a fun project.
And yes, perhaps the Slog could give some consideration to upgrading their uh, thing. Look at Daily Kos, for example. People there have conversations. Yeah, I know. Conversations! And the technology that makes that possible is free.
We are devo!
The Slog's web design is perfectly good. Design is not about making pretty stuff; it's about utility. Slog is utile. You can read the posts and comment on them, and most importantly of all, there is a constant stream of them. You don't have to hunt around for the posts; they're right there.
Any aesthetic judgements about color schemes or precise placement of ads or whatever are immaterial.
Museum websites are different, because they're not really about a constant stream of new stuff -- but they could be. Why doesn't the Henry turn their process of "putting their collection online" into a blog? It would be trivial to have the images make a brief stop on the front page on their way to whatever dark corner they're going to be hidden in eventually.
One word of advice: if any prospective web designer mentions Flash, hit him with a shovel and bury him in the back garden before he can do any more damage.
Just a few of the useful things the Slog can't do:
- Show comments in a threaded format.
- Display only headlines of comments without body text.
- Keep numbered reply references after spam is deleted (if I say @4 and then later on #3 is deleted, then 4 is a different comment).
- List all comments by a certain user.
- Notify you when there are any replies to a thread, or any replies to your own post.
- Allow user to rate other comments.
- Let commentors embed images in their comments.
I could go on. Not all of these things are necessarily desirable, but as it is Slog comments are just "a one-million-mile scroll," which doesn't score very high as far as utility goes. The nicest thing I can say about the Slog is there are no smilies.
Aesthetic judgments are most definitely immaterial, but many of the things that most make life worth living are by nature immaterial.
So you're making up for the lack of images with an over-usage of the tag!!! Kewl!!1!!eleventyone!1!
the bold tag....effin' Slog!
If they start letting people put images in the comments, I'll never look at the page again.
I don't care about most of that stuff. I've been navigating forums, newsgroups and whatnot since rn, and honestly half of the steps forward since then have been steps backward.
One thing I would like is for a text editor in the comments that recognized returns. Having to type in the goddamn br tags is pretty irritating.
If it's any consolation, Jen, most museums NOT in Seattle have crusty ass websites too.
Fnarf - what's wrong with flash?
Signed,
The Ignorant
isn't the whole point of a museum is for people to GO to the museum...in person..to see the collection.
What's the point if you can just go online and look at high res images of the collection? I would think you would want to entice with images here and there, but your ultimate goal should be to get people off their arse and go to the museum.
I know the Henry's in the middle of a big website redesign that is largely about sorting and delivering information, not only related to the collection listings.
It so easy to criticize others. If you don't like their website why not offer some useful suggestions or offer to finance the solution rather than bashing them.
Flash:
For the sight-impaired, they just don't exist. The code is not searchable so their voice-readers have nothing to read.
Also, you can't link to individual flash pages, and since the code isn't searchable, they don't rank well with search engines.
The Henry & SAM's web sites are run by IT people with no art education backgrounds. Most of the code for SAM's web site was boosted from somewhere else. To be fair to both institutions, they probably do not pay market rate salaries so they are getting what they pay for. The Frye's site is so 1997.
Flash is an awful program that is not very easy to learn and update. If you do your site in PHP or straight up HTML, you can maintain it more easily.
The lack of images at museums could be due to artist's reproduction rights for Contemporary Arts. Anything before 1923 should fall into Public Domain. As arts educational institutions, Museums should be able to display works in their collections under the "fair use" standard. Perhaps a "Law Eagle" out their could clear this point up.
All of these institutions should devolve control of their web sites to the various appropriate Curatorial departments using dynamic PHP with MYSQL databases. That way there is more than one person posting content and there is less of a work flow log jam that IT departments are notorious for.
Then again, what do I know?
Saying that the problem with Flash is that it's not accessible, or not linkable to specific pages, is like saying that the problem with having crazy people break into your house and shit on your carpet is that it doesn't match the drapes.
It's true, but it's not really the heart of it. The primary problem with Flash: it is almost always used to create junk that is both HUGE and FUGLY. It's anti-content; it not only does not provide value on its own, it sucks in and destroys any value that comes near it.
Funny topic. The one that peeves me the most is SAMs as upon delving into it you feel you are about to root around for endless miles (I'm speaking of their MY COLLECTION), when you suddenly find a choice limitation of 10 images. I was exasperated for wasting my time.
I will put in a rather biased mention for the Burke Museum whose search of their Research and Collections reveals a pretty much a bottomless cup of coffee. For instance check out the site dedicated to Westpoint Archeology.
Jen - the Howard House site has existed since 1999 and granted, it's old and crusty, it works and gets the point across. Yes, the logo is one step to getting in - but you know where you are from the beginning. Since 2003 the site has had nearly 2.5 million unique visitors. This is great for the artists who are represented by Howard House - but nothing compared do other sites - try art.com (ugh).It does get used and is a great tool. To your other point, we post all upcoming shows on the "about" tab as well as what's going on with the artists currently. Sometimes it's only a click away. Easy to find. And, unless specifically requested by artists each artist page hold all former work as an archive for visitors - just drag your cursor over artists and click. Finally - we've posted for the first time a web-a-log that has interviews, essays and images that can be downloaded in a pdf and then printed out to read. Yes, there is a lot of updating that can happen, but just move your cursor over one of the tabs, click, to discover more!!!!
Being anti Flash is so 2004. With some action script and xhtml a site can be compact and easily updatable. It's not like Flash used to be. Unfortunately it is really not something anyone other than a dedicated programmer can master.
I was just in LA and if you want to see a site that is really impressive, go to the MOCA.org site for the Murakami exhibit that's on now. http://www.moca.org/murakami/
There's even behind the scenes video but it makes total sense given the commercialism of the subject matter. And this show is so large that the site makes the show more appealing, in my opinion.
If so many art venues in this advanced tech city are having a problem, there must be a reason. I can see some exceptions, especially at places like the Frye where there probably has never been a budget for an updated site, but I can tell you first hand that it's really difficult to design and code one of these sites.
The problem is that you are trying to make something that has the accessibility of a "store" without the stigma or vibe. And you're trying to make something that reflects the artistic essence of the subject matter without clashing with it or cluttering it up. And when this changes regularly it's hard to have a flexible skin (web interface skin).
There's a lot of information to cram in but its really easy for it to become unwieldy - especially when the person with the final vision doesn't know the first thing about the dynamics of web design and it's restrictions. It's the old IT tech vs. Graphic Designer problem - the subject of many many meetings.
Can we see some examples of one that works?
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