I moved from New York to Massachusetts about four years ago.  While I lived in NY, one of my favorite ways to pass the time was to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Since I visited this museum in person, I wanted to see what the website looked like and how easy it was to navigate.

     Today, Monday, June 3, 2008, I took a tour of the site.  According to the copyrights at the bottom of every page, it was created in 2000, and it has just the museum name as its author.  The website has an incredible amount of information from paintings to art pieces to photographs to musical instruments; the site gives you access to all these wonderful curatorial departments.  I believe the purpose of this website, as Therese Ripley mentioned in her site evaluation of the Louvre Museum is “to inform, teach, and unify the world” of all the wonderful works of art in its possession. 

     One of my favorite artists’ works to visit in the museum was Vincent van Gogh.  The museum site has a section called ‘Explore & Learn’ which has different ways to explore art.  One of them is through the artists, and in particular ‘How Van Gogh Made his Mark.’  In this section you learn everything about his life from a short biography starting in Holland, where he was born in 1853, and going to Paris where he went to live with his brother Theo and was introduced to the Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist styles which he experimented with in his paintings.  Then he visited Arles, France where he went to set up a group of artists and he painted a total of about 100 paintings and wrote about 200 letters.  This is also the place where he suffered a breakdown and cut off part of his left ear with a razor.  He spent about 444 days here and was hospitalized twice.  From there he went to an asylum in Saint-Rémy, near Arles in May of 1889 and in a year there did about 150 paintings. 

     In 1890 he went to Auvers-sur-Oise where in two months he did about 60 paintings.  In a field near here he tried to commit suicide, shooting himself in the chest and died two days later accompanied by his brother Theo.  Throughout his ten year career he did about 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and is considered one of the forerunners of Modern Art.  In this section you also learn to draw and who inspired his drawings.  Also about his techniques, use of light, lines, the tools he used and his use of graphics in his drawings.  It was an in-depth view at the artist Vincent van Gogh.  It was very easy to go from section to section here in this specific topic and throughout the site.

     The site itself is designed simply.  The colors blend well with the different menu selections.  Each page has a somewhat similar layout and all pages have the main menu links at the bottom of the page.  There are no big image files that take too long to download.  Every picture has a description and a provenance link next to it and downloads easily.  The menu is structured in such a way that you first have access to the museums works of art, and then everything that is related to the user follows, like opening hours, membership, help links, lectures, visits, educational resources, and events that promote its contents.  The search engine is very helpful and is accessible in all pages.  All this information is available through links on the first page.  It has visitor information in 10 different languages for your convenience.  There is also a section designed for kids with facts and pictures that might interest them.  It is simplified into easy to read files for the kids.  It has a podcast program that users can access to download and listen to certain programs about specific exhibitions on their computers or MP3 players.  

     The site is functional, informative and unique.  I love how everything is organized and set up.  It was a wonderful experience.  It felt the same as going to visit in person with the added advantage that all information is at your fingertips and it’s easier on your feet.