Many of the courses I taught were part of the universities’ core curricula, which means that my students came from various academic backgrounds and typically enrolled in the class to fulfill a degree requirement. Some of my students had never even visited an art museum! An exciting challenge was to deliver the course material in new, engaging ways. My lectures quickly became multimedia presentations that employed devices like film clips, music, and the internet to introduce key art historical concepts and to illustrate techniques. The opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) provides a nice entrée into a discussion of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830) exemplifies certain characteristics of Romanticism, a short scene from The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) demonstrates Michelangelo’s transfer of cartoons onto the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and so on. Similarly, one of my assignments at the IMA will be to expand understanding of the scholarly information offered in our digitized publications by conceiving of complementary text, interactive demonstrations, and audio-visual material. This online content will be accessible to a broader audience.

Xia Gui, "Fishing Village in Twilight Glow," mid-1200s.

Teaching also allowed me to move beyond my primary area of study – nineteenth-century Danish portraiture – and become a generalist. Conversance in other periods and regions of art historical research will serve me well at the IMA, since the museum’s collection is comprehensive in scope. For another project, I will develop thematic connections between pieces in different galleries. Viewers will recognize that shared artistic impulses yield different results depending on the historical and cultural milieus that informed the works’ production. For example, Xia Gui’s Fishing Village in Twilight Glow (mid-1200s) and John Constable’s The Cornfield (ca. 1816) reflect the artists’ attachment to their home regions. Xia Gui, a Chinese painter of the Southern Song Academy, probably drew inspiration from the landscape of Hangzhou (then capital of China). Local scenery interested the British painter Constable, too. The Cornfield depicts a spot situated between East Bergholt and Deadham in his native county of Suffolk.  In Constable’s choice of subject matter, he exhibited the nationalistic sentiments shared by many artists following the Napoleonic Wars. However, in its plein air execution, this preparatory oil sketch signals the emergence of an international artistic method, inspired by the studies of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819) and Thomas Jones (1742-1803), and practiced by contemporaries like C. W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875). In contrast, Xia Gui’s approach evokes Chinese artistic tradition in order to convey his allegiance.

John Constable, "The Cornfield," 1816.

Over the course of the next year, I look forward to exploring these two works further, along with many others in the museum’s rich collection, and to developing pedagogical strategies that will best captivate visitors to the IMA’s website.

One interesting thing we found is that the top ten lists (based on unique pageviews) for 2007, 2008, and 2009 are all very similar. While there was some movement within the lists as far as #1, #2, etc., the pieces that made the cut for these three years were all the same (with the exception of 1-2 variations each year). A noticeable shift happened in 2010 when different works started popping up on the list.

As it just so happens, we introduced a new website in early 2010 and one of the changes we made involved the collection section. We improved the search capabilities with the intent of allowing someone to find something specific with ease, while also creating an interface to support casual browsing. A month later, we also introduced a new tagging feature that made the collections search more interactive. Tagging features in general have changed the way people look for information as users can search based on input or classifications from other users -  another possible reason for the shift in the top ten.

Even without these changes to the website, I would expect to see a change of sorts as technology improves and computer usage behavior changes. Online search habits have transformed (and will continue to do so) as people become more accustomed to search mechanisms and better in tune with the results a specific query will trigger. This is naturally going to change the results that are returned, thereby influencing the popularity of certain pages.

Over the past few years we’ve also become more active on social media sites, which may account for some of the changes seen pre and post 2010. Miss Lemon Drop (below) is just one example of this:

Caption: Mel Ramos, "Miss Lemon Drop," 1964.

We tweeted about this piece back in February, (in response to MAN’s Swimsuit Issue), and it made its top 10 debut for the first time as #6 for 2011. Granted, our 2011 list only includes the past two months of data, but I think this does speak to the influence of social media and the way it allows us to share our collection with wider audiences. Search engines have also added social networks to their results pages, fueling the popularity of those pieces we feature on places like Twitter or Facebook. This, in turn, gives museums an opportunity to call attention to works that may not otherwise be seen amidst the collection blockbusters that are regularly searched for on a site.

Speaking of blockbusters – even with changes in search habits, social media, and our website, we did see two pieces that made the top ten lists in all five years:

Tiffany Louis Comfort, "Angel of the Resurrection," 1904.

Do-Ho Suh, "Floor," 1997-2000.

Angel of Resurrection and Floor are clearly two popular pieces on our website peaking in popularity in 2009 at #1 and #4, respectively. Other works that made the list multiple times throughout the years include:

Rembrandt van Rijn, "Self-Portrait," 1629.

Alfred Thompson Bricher, "Morning at Grand Manan", 1878.

John Currin, "Blond Angel," 2001.

Winslow Homer, "The Boat Builders," 1873.

Below you can see a bit of the data we have gathered from this exercise. Starting with 2011, each graph lists the rank, title of the piece, and its change in rank from the previous year. From this you can see that Robert Indiana’s LOVE (1966) moved up one position from 2010 to 2011, or that Georgia O’Keefe’s Jimson Weed was not on the list in 2009, but made it to the top ten in 2010.

2011 Most Accessed (year-to-date)

Rank	Title
1	Tim Hawkinson, Möbius Ship, 2006.
2	Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1966.
3	Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1970.
4	Janet Scudder, Nude Child (Seaweed), 1914.
5	Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fifth Plague of Egypt, 1800.
6	Mel Ramos, Miss Lemon Drop, 1964.
7	Louis Comfort Tiffany, Angel of the Resurrection, 1904.
8	Georgia O’Keefe, Jimson Weed, 1936.
9	Jan the younger Brueghel, The Sense of Taste, 1618.
10	Do-Ho Suh, Floor, 1997-2000.

2010 Most Accessed

Rank	Title
1	Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fifth Plague of Egypt, 1800.
2	Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1970.
3	Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1966.
4	Ingrid Calame, From #258 Drawing (Tracing from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the L.A. River, 2007.
5	Georgia O’Keefe, Jimson Weed, 1936.
6	Louis Comfort Tiffany, Angel of the Resurrection, 1904.
7	James Turrell, Acton, 1976.
8	Do-Ho Suh, Floor, 1997-2000.
9	Vincent Van Gogh, Landscape at Saint-Rémy (Enclosed Field with Peasant), 1889.
10	Kara Walker, They Waz Nice While Folks While They Lasted (Sez One Gal to Another), 2001.

2009 Most Accessed

Rank	Title
1	Louis Comfort Tiffany, Angel of the Resurrection, 1904.
2	Kara Walker, They Waz Nice While Folks While They Lasted (Sez One Gal to Another), 2001.
3	Barnaba da Modena, Crucifixion, 1375.
4	Do-Ho Suh, Floor, 1997-2000.
5	Alfred Thompson Bricher, Morning at Grand Manan, 1878.
6	Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1629.
7	Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1966.
8	Master of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 1125.
9	Winslow Homer, The Boat Builders, 1873.
10	John Currin, Blond Angel, 2001.

2008 Most Accessed

Rank	Title
1	John Currin, Blond Angel, 2001.
2	Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1629.
3	Barnaba da Modena, Crucifixion, 1375.
4	Louis Comfort Tiffany, Angel of the Resurrection, 1904.
5	Kara Walker, They Waz Nice While Folks While They Lasted (Sez One Gal to Another), 2001.
6	Master of San Baudelio de Berlanga, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 1125.
7	Alfred Thompson Bricher, Morning at Grand Manan, 1878.
8	Do-Ho Suh, Floor, 1997-2000.
9	Winslow Homer, The Boat Builders, 1873.
10	Willem Kalf, Still Life with a Chinese Porcelain Jar, 1669.

2007 Most Accessed

It was one year ago today that we launched the current version of IMAmuseum.org. We are admittedly still proud of our website as it took a large group of IMA staff six months of dedicated work to create what you see today. In a blog post, we introduced the world to the new set of features of the site. Today, we thought we would take a brief look back at those features and see what worked and what needed a little adjusting throughout the year.

Front page of IMAmuseum.org as seen on 2/1/2011.

With the exception of changing images in the blocks, the front page has seen virtually no changes during the last year. We originally toyed around with the idea of making the main banner image somewhat dynamic, with rotating images, but eventually opted to let it remain static until a true need arises.

The interactive calendar on IMAmuseum.org.

The calendar is among the most novel features of the website, providing a simple “month-at-a-glance” interface. This has seen little change in its first year as well. Museum calendars can be littered with complication, and we like to think this clean approach brings a sense of clarity to users.

The IMAmuseum.org collection search showing advanced options.

Another feature that has held up fairly well is the collection search. You can see the set of advanced search options in the screenshot above. While looking through search logs, we can see that most users don’t seem to use the “Department”, “Materials”, or “Object type” search filters. We have received a lot of positive feedback and seen moderate use of the slider tool for accession and creation date though.

Live search results when searching for "superbowl".

The Apple-style live search, sprinkled with a little bit of administrator search boosting, has proven extremely useful. We watch our website analytics heavily and try to understand what users are really searching for based on their terms. Using this information, we can boost specific content for specific search keywords. Above, you can quickly find our losing Super Bowl bet from last year. (Be sure to follow this year’s bet as well).

Three major exhibition sites created within IMAmuseum.org in the last year.

We decided that we would produce all major exhibition sites (commonly called microsites) under the IMAmuseum.org umbrella once we launched this new site.  The site was designed in such a way that dramatically different designs could be “sandwiched” between the header and footer. This can especially be seen in the new and visually impacting Thornton Dial exhibition site.

The IMAmuseum.org shopping cart.

I’ll admit. Up until this point I have been a little self-congratulatory. When it comes to the eCommerce features of the IMA website though, we have had to do a fair amount of updating and improving. I don’t know that any of us quite expected the amount of work behind running, maintaining, and supporting an online store. We also took quite a risk by providing the ability to purchase memberships, retail, tickets, and give donations within a single cart system. Here are some of the lessons learned from the first year:

• Applying membership discounts online is hard! We are still actively trying to make improvements to ensure members can quickly and easily log on to the site and have their account aware of their benefits. Building a system that is capable of respecting the many nuances of our specific membership rules is also a continuous effort.
• Users do not like to leave the site to pay. When we originally launched the site, all payments were made through Google Checkout, which involved the user leaving the IMA website to pay and then being redirected back to the IMA site. While we had good reasons for using this at the time, the frustration experienced by users did not account for those. We have since switched to a payment provider which allows users to checkout completely without ever leaving the website. Since this change, we have seen a huge decrease in the number of shopping carts abandoned.
• Have support processes in place. The software development team didn’t quite realize that they would be acting in a custom support role. While many of the features of the website “run themselves”, an eCommerce operation definitely requires the offline touch as well. We are just now getting formal support chains in place for online customers that need assistance with online purchases. This isn’t to say there wasn’t anyone to help in the last year. It was just a matter of bouncing around e-mail and involving too many people.

Let us know if there are more ways we can improve our site in order to better serve the needs of the online visitor.

The journey from concept to completion of the catalog for the American collection began more than two years ago with a compilation of the material that would be necessary to begin the project. Nothing could begin without a complete list of the American collection. For this project the list took the form of a printout which contained each piece in the American collection organized by its accession number, the order in which it came into the collection. For example 2008.352 was the 352nd piece to come into the collection in 2008. It was then necessary to ascertain from this list the works to be included in the web catalog. The remarkable aspect of a web catalog is that once this decision is made there will always be the opportunity to create more entries in the future.

Each work in the American collection was examined by the curator. A list of the works that would be included in the web project was made. This list included but was not limited to every work from the American collection that has been on display at the IMA. While working on this project a list was made of works that had come into the collection during the early period of the museum’s existence that are not deemed museum quality and should be considered for deaccession (sale). When these lists were completed, the files on each of these pieces, known as the works’ “historical files,” had to be examined. It was hoped that these files would provide detailed information on the work and its history. In some cases they did and in others very little information could be gleaned from these files. It was also necessary to pull together every label produced for the art work, which would be a starting point for the art work’s catalog entry. Since biographies on the artists were not available in the museum’s historical files, this research was also required. All these tasks would have been difficult for one curator to do without devoting every working moment to these tasks. Fortunately, the American Art department was given an endowment to create a fellowship by Joan D. Weisenberger, a museum patron, which provided an assistant for this project. One of the tasks the Fellow was responsible for was compiling the pertinent information from the historical files.

Once we had all the available information, we had to devise a format for each entry in the American Collection web catalog. It was decided that each work would have a label that included its accession number, artist, title, medium, size and credit line, followed by a section called “Learn More” containing the artist’s biography and a discussion of the work in the collection. The last section called “Reference,” includes a source where the reader can find more information.

Compiling the information took about a year. It was now time to start writing. The curator wrote the entries and the Weisenberger Fellow created the checklists that would be used to transfer the material to the web and worked with the web team so these lists met their criteria. Periodic meetings where held with the web team, curator, and Fellow to make certain we were all on the same page. Putting a collection on the web was a new project that had to be worked out so that the final product would be easy to transfer to the museum’s website.

Each work was to contain an image to accompany the text. In most cases this was possible before the launch date, but we decided not to hold up the catalog for those entries without an image and add the image when it became available. Of course, this is another great aspect of a web catalog. Everything we put on the museum’s webpage can be altered, added to or removed if necessary. We can even redesign the whole project, if at a later date it is decided that the catalog needs a new look that would work better. I am constantly reminded of the flexibility of the web, which allows us to launch this catalog without feeling permanently locked into any decisions. So if a reader comes across something that they question, something we missed, or just doesn’t like some aspect of the project, we can address these concerns. We are anxious for input on the American collection catalog on the IMA website. This is the IMA’s first attempt at creating a web collection catalog, and we want you, our audience, to be able to not only learn from it but be motivated to come to visit the museum to see these works of art. It is hoped that with the information this web catalog offers, our visitors can come to the museum and enjoy the work as the artist intended.

Something that could easily be over looked about the IMA’s web presence is the amount of social media the museum is creating on a weekly basis.

So in the process of the redesign, the IMA Stream was invented.  What is the IMA Stream? You might ask.  Well the idea behind the stream was to create a single consolidated “stream” of all the content that is being produced by the museum.  The stream contains up to the minute updates from Flickr, Twitter, the IMA Blog, press releases, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and Artbabble.  This allows visitors to quickly browse thru the latest internet offerings from the museum in one convenient spot.

The system was made possible utilizing a common internet standard known as RSS.  In a nutshell, RSS is a standard for sharing and syndicating content across the internet. Leveraging the power of RSS feeds we are able to programmatically aggregate all of our content from multiple sites into a single feed which is what you see when you visit the IMA website.

plenty more here

I’m in no way comparing our new site with Lolcats. But they mentioned a strategy that we have directly copied with European Design – and will be doing so with a another ‘art video’ site later this month. They shared with the packed Austin, TX audience (munching on cheeseburgers), that with I Has a Hotdog! they very quietly released the site. No major marketing campaigns, no online ads, no webcasts – you get the picture. It launched and they watched. They watched it gain traffic, made changes and waited. We’re doing something similar with European Design.

European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century

This exhibition opens March 8, so in the weeks leading up to this opening, you’ll begin to see more marketing strategies associated with the exhibition and this new site. This will include print pieces, billboard, e-mails, etc. This is one of the earliest site launches ever done by the IMA and the site is still incomplete. I don’t see a problem with that.  With our projects, we often wait until the very last moment – or when we feel that it has reached the ‘perfect’ level.  I’m all for taking a more informal approach to what we publish.

We will be adding Designer Profiles on a regular basis between now and the run of the show. We will be adding audio and video content. And we have a couple of tricks up our sleeves for other content ideas. Some IMA staff have posted this site on their Facebook walls, e-mailed friends, or tweeted. You may have found it within IMA’s main site.

Now I’m letting the lolcat out of the bag – blog style. Come see a site that will keep getting better and before the real marketing campaign begins. It’s like a band that’s on the verge of making it, and you can say, “I knew it when…”

While investigating the exhibits and schedules on the Shedd’s website, I found an intriguing interactive called SheddHeads. Visitors to the aquarium can upload their photos and videos, rate them, and enter them in contests. It inspired me to bring my camera along, and while I was there I noticed quite a few other folks taking pictures with everything from cell phones to digital SLRs. I have to admit that I got in the groove taking photos and forgot to check the labels to see what it was I was observing a few times. So, is this a missed educational opportunity… or a successfully engaging experience? Something to consider.

What do you think? Can an interactive experience be too engaging?