By Jo Best, 26 June 2006 16:00
NEWS
The Tate Modern has unveiled a revamp of its online offerings to complement the art gallery's recent rehang.
The Tate's website now boasts a virtual tour of the galleries designed to help art lovers planning a visit to the South Bank. The tour also sports a function to let would-be visitors plan out their own route through the gallery, according to which art they'd like to see, on an in-depth map of the centre's layout.
The Tate Modern has also introduced additional educational features to the site, including a timeline of the gallery's works, where users can trawl its catalogue according to art movement, period or year.
The new functionality will also be available on touch screens around the Tate itself.
Jemima Rellie, head of digital programmes at Tate, said the internet tour facilities are designed to help visitors avoid feeling overwhelmed by the volume of works available to view, to let past visitors get a glimpse of pieces at home they may not have had time to see and to give those who aren't able to get to the gallery a chance to see what they're missing in the collection.
The website, produced with BT, attracts more than one million visitors per month and claims to be Europe's most popular art website.
According to Martin Percy, senior interactive filmmaker at BT, further developments are planned and the telco's design team are working on an addition to the BT Series section of the Tate Modern website. The Series, which has already featured artist Tracy Emin, aims to explore the work of a single artist through interviews, their personal commentary and information on their works.
Host of the BBC's Sunday AM and member of the Tate's council, Andrew Marr, today launched the overhauled site at the Tate Modern. "I hope this gets used in bedrooms and coffee bars and kitchen tables around the country and around the world," he said. "Apparently 40 per cent of men on the internet are visiting porn sites. This is something much more exciting."
The tour can be found at http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/explore/.
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1. Richard Sheppard
Great idea.
Serious students may need access to the real thing, but it allows us ordinary mortals to browse more of the art, more often.
Larger images would be nice.