A New Digital Platform for Scholarly Art Content

The new LINK digital platform, designed by C&G Partners for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, is an innovative online experience for scholarly content in the fine arts. LINK is an accessible, expandable system with multiple interaction models, meeting the needs of users that range from scholars and art enthusiasts to teachers and students.

The first LINK project on the platform is for the High’s recently opened exhibition “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe.” Users can learn about the self-taught, folk artist’s life and artwork through an interactive timeline, videos, scholarly texts, high-resolution images, and a digital guestbook. In the coming months, the High will publish LINK sites for additional exhibitions.

The LINK’s evergreen, minimalistic interface is paired with modular, flexible templates that support solo and group exhibitions across media from painting and sculpture to video and digital art. The platform aims to accommodate diverse curatorial subject matter for years to come.

To differentiate LINK from the overall Museum branding—while maintaining a consistent visual identity—C&G employed bold, condensed sans serif letterforms and embraced the Museum’s striking red and white color palette.

The digital platform’s gridded structure was inspired in part by the architecture of the Museum itself. The pattern also references the common use of grids in print publications to create structure and organization, as well as the grid as a visual structure, which lies at the heart of contemporary art.

Website integration is achieved by ensuring that the WordPress template seamlessly connects with the Museum’s website (high.org); the online collection managed by The Museum System (TMS) software; and the digital asset management software (DAMS) Piction.

The user experience is further personalized by using the meaningful filtering options available within the LINK platform, while special emphasis is given to accessibility and a rich responsive experience across devices.

User goals are at the core of the web design system, understanding the value of a museum and art in our lives, and what an experience between a visitor and an artist can inspire. “Our hope is that LINK will serve as a model for the museum field as a way to reach a broader array of cultural consumers, offer dynamic content, and provide an interactive, second life for these important projects,” says Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director.

C&G has worked with several other digital art collections including web design for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation online platform.