The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Timeline of Art History

Teresa Lai, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 1

The Timeline of Art History, numbering more than 20,000 pages, contextualizes 5000 works of the Met's collection by geography, chronology, and theme, via maps, 300 chronological narratives and 800 thematic essays. In order to reach a balance between maintaining the narrative fluidity of the subject matter (the history of world art) and the need to make this ocean of a resource useful, a three-pronged design and editorial approach is taken. First is a clean design that differentiates the three distinct types of content: chronological narratives, special topic articles, and object pages. Second is the intricate hypertext links and pull down menus that connect object to time and space, time and space to theme, theme to theme, theme to object, tying concepts together. Third is to bring the site map and index forward and treat them as top level navigation and research tools, guiding the reader into the otherwise carefully crafted linear and forward-marching structure of the Timeline.