The team that created the Monet Paintings and Drawings at the Art institute of Chicago catalogue consisted of a huge collection of people, from the Director of the Art Institute to a series of authors, visual experts, editors, scientists, and others. Their goal in pursuing this project was to create an art catalogue in digital form, thus taking full advantage of digital capabilities not available in a print version while still keeping it as true to classic art catalogue as possible. They wanted artists and art connoisseurs to still feel comfortable using this digital catalogue, as they would be with the print version they are already familiar with.
The result of their efforts is a beautifully constructed interactive digital catalogue. They were able to create incredibly detailed images of the artwork featured, to the point that users can zoom in on cracks in the paint and other textures to appreciate nearly every detail of the art in its original form. They also included features that allow the users to learn more about the art in the process of it being created, x-ray and infrared scans that show variations of the image in the different layers of paint. There are also detailed descriptions given of the background on the artist, the paintings, art techniques, materials, and more to enhance users’ understanding and experience.
There were a lot of different tools used in creating this catalogue. They took digital photographs, photomicrographs, x-rays, infrared scans, and more in order to capture the artwork in as many ways and in the best ways possible. They fused those together to create the highest quality images. They also used interactive imaging tools to create almost an interactive book for users. Between all the images, text, and other features included, this project took over 15 years to complete and was finally published in 2014.
This project was well executed in that it has a very professional appearance and matches the look that it would have if it were a print catalogue—it even flips between landscape ‘pages’ from side to side like a book. It is very aesthetically appealing and neat. There are helpful tools like a ‘search for this image’ feature and a glossary to help readers out. They definitely took advantage of the capabilities of a digital format as they intended and some of the artwork can almost be better examined digitally than in person because of the quality of the images.
One weakness of this project is that not all of the features are easy to understand or use. Some users may struggle to use the search features or the interactive comparison between images of the artwork because they are not very simple to understand. The Art Institute actually created a video to explain how to use the different features because some of them aren’t self-explanatory. And that video isn’t the easiest to find either.
This project also used several of the scholarly primitives. Comparing was used in order to compare the different scans of the artwork (x-ray vs. infrared vs. photo, etc.). It also used discovering in that it allows the user to interact with the images and discover more about them for themselves.
