Images at the Met - not just paintings

This blog is about the images on the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) – website – and not just the paintings. Since the museum is a place to view works of art such as paintings and sculpture, it is only fitting that the website be rich in images too.

The splash page http://www.metmuseum.org (which changes daily), shows on this day, the Great Hall or lobby.

The Great Hall is huge, as the people are quite small in the photo. But the photo depicts it as a nice place to begin your visit to the museum. A warm, rich tone is used as the background of the page; it gives the photo a warm, rich feel as well. The home page also displays a different work of art at the museum each day. On this day, a photograph of an openwork stamp seal was chosen. Its grays blend nicely with the photograph of the museum lobby. Both photographs working together draw us in and entice us to click the ‘Enter here’ link.

When we click the ‘Enter here’ link we are presented with the home page http://www.metmuseum.org/home.asp (which also changes daily) – ‘Now on View’ and ‘Selected Highlight’s’.

The ‘Now on View’ section includes illustrations of the posters for three current exhibitions. To help visitors, these illustrations are the same as those used in other advertising media. By clicking on an ‘exhibit poster’, the main page for that particular exhibition is displayed. Here one will find an illustration of the poster as well as a link to view pieces in the exhibition. Clicking the link to view pieces in the exhibition brings up a gallery of photographs. These photographs of items in the exhibit are just that, a photograph of the item – as you would expect to see it if you were to attend the exhibition. There is also an enlarge feature to enlarge each photograph.

The ‘Selected Highlights’ section presents six categories, ‘Now at the Met’, ‘The Met Store’, ‘Membership’, ‘Ways to Give’, ‘MuseumKids’ and ‘My Met Museum’. Each is prefixed by a square image. The image is a logo or a thumbnail of a piece (cropped in some cases) in the museum.

In the cases where the square image is a cropped view, the full image is presented when the corresponding link is clicked. For example, the ‘Now at the Met’ thumbnail reveals the full painting when clicked (along with a list of current events). The thumbnail for ‘MuseumKids’ changes daily. When clicked, a banner with thumbnails, some with kids, of art works from various collections in the museum spans across the page. Again, as on the home page, these are cropped views. If any one of these thumbnails is clicked, a gallery of photos opens. The gallery includes a host of photos of items within the associated collection. Each photo, again, is as it appears in the museum (minus frames on paintings). A user can zoom in and enlarge the picture as well.

Museum branding through the use of logos occurs in combinations on the museum web site. The museum logo has text forms, ‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art’ and the Renaissance M. Both are in the banner of each web page. The logo also incorporates the ‘dot’ (with and without the Renaissance M) in a variety of colors to mimic the button one receives after gaining admission to the museum. The museum also has a mascot – Hippo William. All of these elements come together in the ‘Selected Highlights’ section of the home page.

The thumbnail for the ‘Met Store’ link depicts a shopping bag. The name logo is used alone. This image is a representation of the actual shopping bags used in the store and helps individuals associate the bag with shopping at the store. Upon entering the ‘Met Store’ and performing a search on ‘logo’, a variety of products are displayed sporting the various forms of the logo – Renaissance M and dot.

A thumbnail image of the admission button is used to link to ‘Membership’ and William the Hippo is used to link to ‘My Met Museum’.

Icons are used on the website to call attention to particular features. For example, accessibility icons such as pictured: left to right: wheelchair, assistive listening devices and sign language interpretation,



and, guided touch and verbal imaging tours:

are easy to decipher. These icons are used throughout the website as a short hand to inform those who have special needs about events, programs and features that cater to them.

Share and services icons are used to share, email, tag, etc. gallery photos. As shown here, gallery pictures can be shared in a number of Web 2.0 ways when the share icon is clicked.

All the services icons are concisely displayed in the pop-up window. Four “pages” of icons are available, such as, G Bookmarks, Digg, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Blogger, to name a few.