This is what I've been working on since mid-September, when the Walker Art Center hired me back, after four years away, to be web editor for its new, totally revamped website. The format and functionality are more like a new site than an art museum home page. And that's the biggest philosophical change it represents: As a contemporary art museum, the Walker is engaged each day with the collection, curation and presentation of work largely by living artists, not to mention the contextualization of such work by a team of educators and curators. So the new site acknowledges such work and creates a place to host some of this thinking. As web editor, I'm overseeing the site, which means both generating content myself and corralling writing and videos from others at the art center. In her welcome to the site, the Walker's Olga Viso calls the site an "idea hub," which I like: all kinds of thinking in all kinds of formats (videos, blog posts, news articles, tweets, and scholarly essays) will come together here.
I'm excited by the early reception: Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes called it a "game-changer, the website that every art museum will have to consider from this point forward," while the anonymous museum tweeter @museumnerd picked up that kind of language, dubbing it "a forward-thinking, best-practices #gamechanger." I hope, and believe, they're right. I may write more about the site here, time permitting, but for now, please take a look and let me know what you think.
2 comments:
The site is beautiful and full of great information. Can I ask what the support structure for getting information and updating the site to match all its functionality looks like? Nothing too detailed, but if you have a general sense of numbers of people, responsibilities, would love to hear. Thanks!
Sure, Lee. I'm in charge of creating or wrangling content for the site, so I write a lot of it, edit some of the videos, and decide which pieces of existing material (catalogue essays, blog posts or interpretive materials) should appear under Top Stories. I work with curators and other staff on pieces they'll create specifically for the site, and I do topline editing (flow, structure, etc) of those pieces. We've also got three other editors who work at the Walker: one copyedits top stories for the homepage (among other duties), one is managing editor of our print magazine (which gives me some content to re-use), and one does editing of marketing materials, catalogue copy, etc. We've also got a fantastic team of web developers/designers that work on the visual side of things, in concert with our awesome design department. It takes a village, I guess...
Post a Comment