The Art World and the World Wide Web

Artworks are organized by period. To view images of paintings from 2000–2002, the user clicks the “Paintings” tab, then clicks on the “2000–2002” button and images of paintings from this period are displayed. The user can opt to view thumbnails or scroll through large screen-sized views of the art, all displayed against the backdrop of a clean white background, like an exhibition space. When viewing an individual image, the user can page down further and find links to other artworks, writings, essays, and reviews from this same period of time.

The beauty of this is that when you are looking at a particular period of paintings you can also see drawing, prints, sculpture, and writings from the same period. That logic applies to any menu section the user visits. This ability to drill down to another layer of detail enriches the user experience, giving the user the freedom to wander through the site retrospectively and contextually, but with ample information to digest, ponder, and enjoy.

The design of the website is graphically simple, providing a clean canvas for the art itself. The first thing a user sees when he goes into the site is the art—images of paintings drift up the screen, past a prominent “Carroll Dunham” banner at the top of the screen. When the user clicks on the banner, the menu bar is revealed, with buttons for paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, writings, press, publications, biography, and contact information. Observant users will notice that the shape of the menu bar is suggestive of the hat worn by Dunham’s notorious “Killer” character, seen so often in his paintings between 1997 and 2006.

For the artist, maintaining the website is simple and intuitive. With exhibit-E’s web-based back-end, the artist can 135