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Entries include Web sites, online collections, online image databases, and online exhibitions. Entries should present and interpret museum collections and themes, and provide a rich and meaningful virtual experience. Projects should demonstrate effective use of multiple media formats, innovative ways of complementing physical exhibitions or providing surrogates for physical experiences in online only exhibitions.
Jury Chair: Bruce Falk
National Holocaust Memorial Museum
 GOLD: Powerhouse Museum Collection Database
Powerhouse Museum
Judges said:
The Powerhouse Museum's new relational search and collections database is a model for organizing, exhibiting, and promoting museum collections. Alongside detailed traditional search functions, the site invites users to add their own metatags (folksonomy), search, and browse by tag cloud, by "relatedness" of items/objects, or by special collections in an easy-to-use, transparent interface that offers consistent and near-instantaneous feedback and results.
Beyond the metadata and search functionality, the depth of database entries "opens the bank vault" of the museum to visitors, enthusiasts, and researchers as many entries are presented with not only tombstone metadata, but article-style contextual information and one or more images -- with three-dimensional objects photographed from multiple angles and accompanied by an indication of scale/size. This not only makes the site rewarding to casual browsers and researchers alike, it provokes thought about the function and purpose of museum collection and preservation. The Powerhouse has already begun to to realize the value of lay expertise via its embrace of folksonomy (an innovation alone worth emulating throughout the museum community), as online users have brought to the museum’s attention objects for potential physical exhibit that were previously considered to be only of ephemeral or specialized interest. An exemplary site.x
Producers said:
The Powerhouse Museum Collection Database
is aimed at providing vastly increased access
and usability for the general public accessing
the Museum's online collection. Whilst museum
collections have been online for many years
they have been primarily aimed at scholars,
researchers, and those who enjoy the notion
of an 'advanced search". The Collection
Database upends this by delivering a search
and browsing experience that has been designed
entirely around increasing discoverability.
It employs social tagging, search tracking and
recommendations, and semantic content analysis,
whilst also making use of the Museum's formal
taxonomies, to make the Museum's ongoing rich
research around the collection accessible to
all. To increase content exposure across the
rest of the Museum sector the collection
database publishes a live Opensearch feed of
search via RSS as well as preliminary feeds
of search results geo-coded by latitude and
longitude. And just to demonstrate that it was
all worth the effort, since its initial public
beta in June 2006, 25 million object records
have been accessed through the new system, and
the Museum reported a 300% increase in web traffic
over a one year period. http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/
 SILVER: ArtShare on Facebook
The Brooklyn Museum
Judges said:
ArtShare on Facebook is a simple web application with a great, innovative concept: provide a database-driven storehouse of images for users to populate their Facebook pages with and allow users to add their own artwork. In other words, this application creates a new virtual port of entry to museum content (albeit one limited to Facebook users), that taps into the universal desire to "share ownership" of great art. By tapping into mainstream social networking, this application engages new audiences and spurs communal discussion and conversation about artwork and other collections objects. Visually, the application succeeds in retaining the clean and appealing interface of the Facebook site itself, no mean feat in the often-cluttered social networking environment. The Brooklyn Museum's foresight and generosity in opening this application up to use by its museum peers (ArtSpace now includes content from eight different museums ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Powerhouse) preserves the integrity and authority of art and institution alike makes this application an award-winning development. Three cheers for ArtShare’s art-sharing concept, execution, and cross-museum synergy.
Producers said:
ArtShare, an application that allows users of the social networking site Facebook to select works of art from the Brooklyn Museum collection to shuffle on their personal profiles. Recognizing that social networking is never one-sided, but rather an exchange of information between parties, we developed this application so other Museums could use it to share works in their own collections; and so artists on Facebook can upload their own artwork to share with friends.
So, what is the significance of ArtShare? ArtShare functions just like everything else on Facebook, allowing the members of its community to get to know one another, but in this case through art. It allows users (art lovers, museum-goers, and others) to connect their profiles and personalities to works in museums’ collections. ArtShare allows them to display their favorite paintings, photographs, and objects on their own terms and in their own social spaces. Browsing through Facebook users who have installed ArtShare, one begins to get a sense of the personal tastes and interests they have, just by looking at the works of art they’ve selected for their profiles.
http://apps.facebook.com/artshare/
 BRONZE: Tracing the Che School in Chinese
Painting
National Palace Museum
Judges said:
This ambitious, elegant, and stunningly beautiful site fulfills museums' highest aspirations for online exhibitry. The National Palace Museum uses multiple media formats to create an inviting and engaging context for discovering, exploring, and learning about the Che School of Chinese art. Multiple modes of navigation ensure an enriching and seemingly endless opportunity for engagement/revisitation. The site's database of 86 artworks is also used to separately populate a timewheel chronology that establishes historical context, as well as an unpretentious three-dimensional gallery that lets visitors browse a chronologically-sequenced catalogue of zoomable images as though they were flipping through open-storage racks. The developers are here rewarded for undertaking and nearly achieving such an ambitious project -- a site whose function and beauty render it a work of literature/art in and of itself. Visitors will flock and return to websites like this.
Producers said:
In Chinese art history, evaluation of the "Che School" of painting, noted for its collage-like treatment of subjects and expressionistic style, had its ups and downs. "Tracing the Che School in Chinese Painting" represents an attempt to unravel the essence of the stories behind these "ups and downs" and "collage-like treatment" by giving them concrete visual form. Browsing the site, you will begin to discover the recurring movement and treatment of these works throughout the sections. In doing so, you will come away with a digital means to multiple combinations of "axial essence" and "visual form." As you appreciate these forms, why not come with us and trace an important school in Chinese painting history--the Che School. Here are more than seventy paintings (some with identities only recently revealed) mostly from the National Palace Museum, and some even from Korea and Japan. They will show you how the Che School went from a local style to the mainstream, and was even exported, before finally succumbing to historical forces. With a creative layout, practical search, interactive timeline, and high-resolution works, this site offers a fascinating journey into Chinese art.
http://tech2.npm.gov.tw/cheschool/
More 2008 Muse Award Winners
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