Indianapolis Museum of Art's
Cycles: African Life Through Art site won in the 2005 Museums of the Web 2005 competition for the "Best Online Exhibition" category.
Some of the judges' comments included:
The design of this online exhibit is a piece of art itself. Beautiful and fun to explore. A highly visually appealing and thought provoking site which provides a rich user experience through interactivity, text and images. A particular highlight is the 'context' link that a user can click on when viewing an object. The graphic elements also nicely enhance the content and navigational options available to the user.
The design is sophisticated and the navigation surprisingly straightforward while being somewhat non-traditional. Good use of music throughout. Excellent use of zooming capabilities on enlarged images for a great amount of detail. More detail than almost any other website that I've seen.
By the way, there was a runner-up in this category: Raid On Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704. Sponsored by Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, the Raid on Deerfield site was acknowledged as a site that....
...raises the bar for historical interpretation online. The site models the value of the whole that derives from a consideration of multiple perspectives. The designers have cast a magical spell that draws the user into another place, another time, another world where one finds truth painted in many shades of grey.
While innovative in many way, the navigation for the site can be confusing with up to 4 different menu areas available, and very little site context given to the visitor. It gets easy to lose where you are in the site.
In case you, like me, are unsure what the story is about Deerfield and the year 1704, the following from the website may whet your interest:
In the pre-dawn hours of February 29, 1704, a force of about 300 French and Native allies launched a daring raid on the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, situated in the Pocumtuck homeland. 112 Deerfield men, women, and children were captured and taken on a 300-mile forced march to Canada in harsh winter conditions. Some of the captives were later redeemed and returned to Deerfield, but one-third chose to remain among their French and Native captors.
Was this dramatic pre-dawn assault in contested lands an unprovoked, brutal attack on an innocent village of English settlers? Was it a justified military action against a stockaded settlement in a Native homeland? Or was it something else?
