After visiting the NMWA website, I decided that it would be interesting to look at a federally funded museum in contrast. I chose the Freer/Sackler Galleries, which are separate yet connected entities that house much of the Smithsonian’s Asian art collection, as well as some American, 19th century European, and Middle Eastern art as well. As expected, this site was very different, and definitely had a much more scholarly, student oriented focus. The site featured its own links to scholarly journals such as Artibus Asiae, although via Jstor (which requires a university or private subscription) it also has external links to sites such as the Library of Congress to further investigate the collection and research that would be relevant. There are also links to forums and conferences, the muesums’ archives and library, and information on how to make appointments to use their facilities.
There is also a good representation of the collection that is digitized, and the information about the images is easy to access. Provenance is searchable to a good degree on this site, and information regarding not only the collection but the individual history of the museums is available in the navigation bar, as this is particularly interesting in the specific case of these museums. One could potentially spend hours bouncing from link to link gathering information. This would be a great place to start for research.
There also is a good amount of encouragement to potential visitors, as temporary exhibitions are not viewable online, one must actually visit the museum. All the relevant information is also present in terms of location, maps, hours, educational workshops, tours, and calendars. Much of the permanent collection is visible online, and you can create a free e-gallery of your own selection, which brings the possibility of the creation of your own ideas about what is relevant to you, not just what the museum dictates. Interesting. This could also be nice when doing image related research, so you have a savable reference!
In all I found the site to be helpful and that it provided more sources and resources that one could expect in one site. However, it may seem a bit overwhelming to the general museum public, as it may not have these interests, but I think its better that they are available than if they weren’t.
Sonya Baccus
