Reviewing the Harvard Art Museums website with Whitelaw’s principles

  1. Show first, don’t ask. The site successfully displays rich contents of art collections at Harvard Museum to support the audience’s understanding of the collection. The size of the images is just right to me that I could grasp the content of collections while still being able to browse through multiple items simultaneously. The ordering of the items is also dynamically related to each other, so the collections can be displayed compactly while not losing their original proportions.

  2. Provide rich overviews. Not sure if the overview principle means a summary of all the collections? But the website does have a function bar on top for users to view its rich collections according to different categories such as work type, technique/medium, period, place, and culture. These categories are very effective not only for the general public to understand and learn but also for scholars to search for a specific group of art collections.

  3. provide samples. Collections of different types and periods are displayed on the first page to provide rich contextual cues and invite exploration. I assume this is done through an algorithm to generate a diversity of collections for users to browse so that audience can get a sense of what artworks there are in the museum.

  4. Provide context. This is done very professionally for the Harvard Art Museum. When the user clicks an item, all related information is displayed: identification and creation, physical description, acquisition and rights, and subjects and contexts. Users could also click the link about the author to see other works and better understand the relationship and structure of the artists’ work.

5.Share high-quality primary content. When the user clicks the item, there is the option to enlarge the image as well as download/order it. Under the acquisition and rights section, it also indicates,’To request a higher resolution file of this image; please submit an online request.’ which allows the general public and scholars to get high-resolution images for free.

Other principles: Allow users to curate their own collections by adding and organizing artworks. Provide Citation, IIIF, and sharable link formats for users to cite, embed images, and share collections in all sorts of ways.