MCN 2024

A website redesign is never just a fresh coat of paint: a new digital home on the web provides opportunities for institutions to reintroduce themselves from the ground up. This session encompasses a series of lightning talks that explore website redesign projects across a range of American institutions and content areas. Including projects at all stages of development, the panel explores each institution’s goals for shifting their brand, expanding their audience, or solving existing problems for their users.

For Glenstone, a website redesign provides an opportunity to reintroduce the institution after the completion of a large-scale renovation. The collection will be digitized and a new content strategy will be employed to humanize the sometimes-intimidating vibes that contemporary art institutions can have.

The Smithsonian Transcription Center, undergoing the first website redesign in its decade+ history, is seeking to adjust to pandemic-initiated changes in the digital volunteering landscape, respond to the needs of a growing and diversifying volunteer community, and rebrand to reflect their status as a premier digital offering of the Smithsonian Institution.

After 10+ years of working with a custom CMS and a third party developer, the Bullock Museum is in the process of migrating and redesigning their website in an open source platform. Originally funded with very different content goals in mind, they are redesigning their website through the lens of a new mission, content strategy & sustainability plan, and a realistic look at what they can upkeep and scale long term.

When the web site for the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum launched in 2023, its goals were simple: capture emails and sell tickets. Since then, it has accumulated content: press coverage, a virtual museum, a special events calendar, and more. As the Museum approaches the start of its second year, the web site needs to offer a more seamless way for visitors to explore the Museum and a more developed “voice” that expresses its character.

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History was prompted by a need to replatform an aging Drupal website, and undertook a two-year project to revisit aspects of the site which reflected 20 years of piecemeal web development. The museum re-evaluated the site’s architecture, design, and features and improved communication of the museum’s newly-articulated mission and values, along with strategic content and branding updates.

The Huntington is currently undergoing an iterative process to reskin and develop a series of priority new features and integrations to update its flagship website, huntington.org. This exciting project follows on the heels of The Huntington’s adoption of a new five-year strategic plan and updated mission statement, along with a comprehensive brand and brand strategy project, resulting in recommendations related to voice and tone, messaging guidelines, a style guide, graphic design, and overall look and feel.

Imagine museum interactives that combine the durability and flexibility of digital with the satisfaction and tactile learning of physical objects. Today’s museums have learned to rely on the ease and content flexibility that digital platforms offer but interactive screens have become ubiquitous and an analog dial telephone is suddenly strange and intriguing. How could we ever go back to the traditional diorama? This session will explore “phygital”: what happens when we combine digital and physical interfaces for museum engagement. Phygital includes AI overlays but it also includes alt controllers where visitors can use physical objects to control digital environments. You’ll hear from designers and creators using digital/physical interfaces to wash digital boats, play the digital drums and redirect digital water. Join us as we explore the possibilities of combining digital and physical into engaging interactive experiences.

Office spaces make for great recording studios. And expert voice talent is closer than you think.

For decades, audio guides have remained a staple of the museum visit. Though technologies have evolved, the core experience remains the same: Today's visitors continue to arrive at cultural institutions with an expectation of having access to expert audio commentary from curators, artists, historians, community members, and any array of voices providing a complementary perspective to the environment surrounding them.

Great audio content can be produced inexpensively and with tools that are readily available. This session will provide insights into the technical and creative aspects of creating compelling audio content using readily and easily available resources.

Presented by Bloomberg Connects, a community partner for this year's conference.

Los Luceros Historic Site sits on 300-acres of New Mexico land with apple orchards, the Rio Grande, historic buildings, and a rich queer history including Maria Chabot and Georgia O’Keeffe. This historic site opened in 2019, right before every museum and historic site in New Mexico closed due to the pandemic. In January of 2023 the Program for Interactivity and Cultural Technology (PICT) in Media Arts & Technology developed multiple installations for Los Luceros as they planned a grand re-opening.

A 3D-Interactive 60”x44” CNC engraved table was created from trees that burned during the devastating northern New Mexico fires of 2022. The table has 11 buttons that each feature something significant about the location on site they are representing. Different historic structures, animals, and iconography were also created using Blender 3D- an open-source application. Buttons and buildings were 3D-printed in Becca Sharp’s home studio. Using open source hardware (the Arduino and the Museduino- developed in-house by Rianne Trujillo and Miriam Langer) to connect the buttons and LEDs, which in turn illuminate historic buildings, the acequia madre (the mother irrigation canal), and key features of this incredible site on the banks of the Rio Grande.

What makes this table so special is the use of technology to enhance the historic site without requiring the visitor to use screen-based technology. Visitors can feel the corn-based plastic that houses the buttons and the wood that was given a second life through this project. The table also guides visitors as a way-finding tool and creates an exciting map for both adults and children to learn about all that the site has to offer.