Katherine Barrow & Fiona Moorhead - Digital curating and a site for possibilities
Channel: NDF - National Digital Forum
Date: 2016-12-07

Digital curating and a site for possibilities: Revealing collections on Auckland Art Gallery’s new website

Katherine Barrow & Fiona Moorhead (Pixel Fusion, Auckland Art Gallery)
11:00 - 11:30am Wednesday 23 November, Main Stage (Soundings)

Last year, Auckland Art Gallery commissioned a full re-design and re-development of their website with a view to facilitating digital engagement. The Gallery partnered with Pixel Fusion, a digital product design and development studio based in Auckland, to bring this vision to life.

A primary focus of the new website project was to drive online engagement with Auckland Art Gallery’s incredible collection. More than 98% of the Gallery’s collection of 16,000 artworks was already available online, however the Gallery wanted to explore new ways to share artworks and their stories. The new website improves the online display of the art collection and for the first time displays the treasures of the Gallery’s art archives alongside the artworks, presenting a wider context of art practice.

The first part of this talk will provide an outline of the project to digitise Auckland Art Gallery’s archives collection and develop the presentation of archives on the new website. The 151 archive collections are a vibrant assortment of art historical gems, including Frances Hodgkins’ correspondence, the Feminist Art Networkers’ Archive, and Tony Fomison’s studio papers. The second part will discuss the approach that Auckland Art Gallery and Pixel Fusion adopted to creating an engaging online collection experience. Taking inspiration from the role that curators play in the physical gallery space, the project team created tools that empower the Gallery to tell stories and make art accessible to everyone. The final part of this talk will explore how the new site will serve as a foundation for future innovation, and will suggest ways to expand upon the concepts of digital curatorship and storytelling.

Katherine is the Lead UX Architect at Pixel Fusion, a digital product studio based in Auckland. She’s passionate about the designer’s role in building and growing businesses, and is a strong advocate for design thinking and design-led strategy. She has a particular passion for the application of UX and Digital Strategy to facilitate storytelling and engagement.

Fiona is the Collections Registrar at Auckland Art Gallery, where she manages the process of acquiring new artworks and oversees the gallery’s outward loans programme. She is fascinated by the convergence of art, data and the digital, and during her career so far has worked on several projects to display collections online.