Sites for Sore Eyes

Robin Rice on Visual Art

by Robin Rice

Seeking out an interesting show to review when many businesses are on August holiday, I found myself exploring the websites of about 20 local galleries and museums. Some are attractive and welcoming, but more than you would expect are, simply, disorganized and off-putting. Many sites provide content that reflects and expands on what you would find if you visited the gallery; others, not so. And then there are a few so beguiling, you might visit just for fun.

On the Internet I want facts up front: Where is the gallery? What will I see when I get there? Tipped off by a friend, I found the site for ArtJaz Gallery (artjaz.com), a small Old City art space, to be among the most user-friendly. Address, hours, current show and gallery artists are right there: attractive and legible on page one.

Another winner is West Philly's Institute of Contemporary Art (icaphila.org). The address and current shows are on the home page; ICA puts additional useful information on a page invitingly called "Visit." Businesslike Locks Gallery (locksgallery.com) in Washington Square runs its letterhead-like address along the bottom of the opening page.

The physical Philadelphia Museum of Art (philamuseum.org) is a scattered metropolis of buildings and collections. Its complexity is unhappily mirrored in a dauntingly fussy home page dense with show blurbs and no addresses in sight. Even "Visiting" doesn't deliver. You have to doggedly click through to a third page not listed on the main menu to find addresses, hours and admission information.

In addition to the basics, commercial and independent venues usually provide descriptions and images of work by gallery artists. Locks neighbor Bridgette Mayer (bridgettemayergallery.com) is one of the most professional and personable in this regard. On its home page, black-and-white thumbnail portraits of artists lead to individual portfolios. Click one of the small artwork images and you get a somewhat larger one-page version. Click on "statement" below the painting, and you get a quote from the artist about the work.

Old City's Pentimenti Gallery (pentimenti.com) is, overall, a somewhat unhelpful site, mysteriously distinguishing "Artists A-H," "Artists I-Z," "Artists Affiliated A-H" and "Artists Affiliated I-Z." Each name in the four alphabetical lists gets a page with a single image. Well-written descriptions of the artists' interests offer some compensation for this obfuscation.

One of the best commercial sites, Rittenhouse's Fleisher/Ollman (fleisher-ollmangallery.com) provides links to reviews of shows going back years and a section describing its own catalog publications. ArtJaz includes a succinct demystifying index of terms (offset lithography, giclée) relating to the art it offers, which is rare.

Many sites link to blogs, personal web pages or YouTube. One of the most unusual byways of content is the ICA's "Miranda" blog. These ruminations about art and the ICA are named for a deceased pet snake belonging to staff writer and novelist Rachel Pastan. In a community-oriented vein, on the other hand, the artist cooperative Vox Populi (voxpopuligallery.org) in Chinatown has a straightforward page of links to useful or interesting people and places.

Web surfers should expect high-quality images on art-related sites. No doubt the members of artist-run 3rd Street Gallery on Second Street (3rdstreetgallery.com) are responsible for providing pictures of their own work. Most are excellent. A few seem faded or out-of-whack due to bad camera positioning. But the almost uniquely satisfying characteristic of the 3rd Street website is that the images can be maximally enlarged in high-resolution close-ups. I expected every gallery to offer this, but almost none do.

I also anticipated more audio and video material. VoxPopuli offers a few examples of the opaque insider content and disorganization that tends to creep into artist-run websites. But even mysteriously titled topics and sporadically functional links can yield some good stuff. At Vox, an uncredited text interview (from the "Good vs. Evil" zine site) with Hair and Diamonds video artist Christopher P. McManus is coupled with his memorable videos.

The only audio without video seems to be the PMA's "Collections: Audio Tours." The persnickety precision that cluttered the PMA's home page shines here in snippets probably made for self-guided tours in the museum. Click on a highlighted name and get a picture about the size of a playing card (too small!). The short iTunes audio commentary might include a little acting and music. For a summer afternoon, it's pretty decent entertainment.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)