One of the best art museums in the world now has a world-class website.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has redesigned and expanded its website. The Met’s site now offers access to all of its more than 340,000 works of art.
There hasn’t been a major overhaul of the site since 2000, the cyber equivalent of the Late Bronze Age. Each of the almost 400 galleries at the museum and The Cloisters now has its own description and photograph on the interactive map and there are thousands of zoomable art images to explore. Students and aficionados will find the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History handy. It’s searchable by date, period, style, region, and theme. First-time visitors will want to check out the suggested itineraries to the Met.
As museums and galleries strive to attract real visitors in a virtual age, they’re hard at work developing their online presence. The Smithsonian Archives is another of many institutions to spruce up their Web profile.
[Photo courtesy morrissey]