Our Redesigned Website
Welcome to our new site! We’ve built it to grow with the museum and are continuing to work on functionality and design, creating an inclusive user experience, for the benefit of all.
Rather than innovate for innovations sake, we’ve created a website for the future that will grow alongside the museum. The site is constructed to enhance the user experience for all of our virtual visitors. With the new site you’ll find the following:
- Effortless ways to learn what’s on at the museum through a convenient interface designed to surface events
- Ease and convenience in becoming a member, with dashboard views for past purchases and monthly payment plans
- Innovative ways to engage with the collection using AI, including games like Share Your View and tools like “visually similar” art within our Collection Online
- Ease in finding what matters, with streamlined navigation and robust filtering and searching functionality
- Elevated, image-driven design highlighting the excellence of the museum and our world-class artwork
New Features, New Ways to Engage
Our Collection
Our Collection Online now offers even more information than ever before, for scholars and art enthusiasts alike. Whether you know exactly what you want to find or you prefer to browse, our new site helps you find art that will inspire you. We are now introducing a comprehensive collection API (Application Programming Interface) integration that automatically updates information from the collection and image databases, exhibition-related content, and conservation images and content. Displaying all our objects and sharing up to 36 fields of metadata, as well as offering conservation images, is the next logical step to our mission and exemplifies what a free museum should be offering online. To learn more about our collection, see our Collection Online Guide and FAQs.
Additionally, each art detail page in Collection Online now has a section of AI-provided “Visually Similar Artworks,” which shows a grouping of artworks that share visual similarities between the work in question, demonstrating how formal qualities such as line, color, form and shape, value, and texture can unite artworks that otherwise might seem disparate from each other.
AI Innovation
The "Visually Similar Artworks” feature isn't the only place our new site uses AI. Our AI games and tool sets, like ”Share Your View,” bring the user into our online collection. Keep an eye out for more of these games to be added to our site soon. We’re also using AI to further our goals to have a truly accessible website; the CMA is leading a group of other prominent museums to find a way to use AI to produce alt text for all the images in our collection.
Search Capabilities
The site’s general search feature offers more comprehensive filters that allow the user to discover a vast array of content. When you enter a keyword, you’ll see results from both the main site pages and our collection, proving a seamless integration of the two. Additionally, our search looks at not only the titles of the results, but also any other text present, giving you the most relevant and accurate results possible.
Our events, exhibitions, press releases, publications and media, historical exhibitions, and deaccessioned art are contained in searchable, filterable locations.
Accessibility Prioritized
We prioritized usability, accessibility, and inclusive design from the project’s inception. We partnered with accessibility firm Prime Access Consulting to ensure we incorporated accessibility best practices as we built the site. This includes requiring alt text for all images added to the site’s back end; graphic, typographic, and contrast affordances throughout the design; appropriate labeling; and developing suitable functionality for use both with and without screen readers. Regardless of ability or mode of exploring the site, our design also focuses on simplifying your experience and making it easy to find what you are looking for.
Thoughtfully Redesigned User Interface
Our new site has also been built with a component-based structure that allows us to be nimble and flexible, combining data sources that the museum has developed internally, such as the Collection API with third-party platforms like Tessitura and the Open Source Content Management System Drupal. These data sources and products are knit together in a flexible way so they can continue to evolve with the museum without requiring a technical redesign. This extends beyond the design to ensure that every page and feature is fully perceivable and operable for multiple modalities, while maintaining robust functionality. With a focus on simplicity and ease of navigation, we’ve corralled a wealth of information and resources into three key pathways, “Art,” “Visit,” and “What’s On,” that will guide users through the museum’s offerings in a truly meaningful, useful, and easily navigable way.
Membership Portal
By logging in, you are always able to access your member dashboard, which allows you to update your personal information, adjust your contact preferences, track your donation history, review your membership details, view your upcoming events, and review your entire transaction history with the option to filter by date ranges. On every page within our e-commerce site, your membership information is conveniently displayed across the top of the screen.
Throughout our website, we’ve seamlessly integrated opportunities to become a member and immediately access your member exclusive benefits. With the added options for a one- or two-year plan, monthly payments, and autorenewal, those who choose to a purchase membership can enjoy enhanced payment flexibility.
Events
The new site has been designed to showcase the wide breadth and quality of all our on-site offerings at the CMA, ensuring that each special event, tour, lecture, exhibition, and class is prominently featured for all to discover and access.
External Partners
The CMA’s award-winning digital team, and the supporting cross-departmental team, partnered with the following vendors:
- Mediacurrent: Front-end design and development
- Substrate: Back-end development
- Prime Access Consulting: Accessibility consulting
- The OPAL Group: API and collection data support
- Design I/O: AI collection concept development
- Fusion Filmworks: Video production