Reading Room takes Dulwich Picture Gallery online
The Daily Telegraph called it ‘The most beautiful small gallery in the world.’ The New York Times said that it is ‘One of the glories of Europe’. And now Dulwich Picture Gallery has a new website by Reading Room, which showcases all the gallery
The Dulwich Picture Gallery is highly involved with its local community, but it is also far more than that – it’s also a genuinely world class institution with an innovative vision for the future. So Reading Room decided to take an approach that would both reflect the gallery’s local commitment and brand it online as a global gallery to be mentioned in the same breath as the Tate, Guggenheim and Louvre.
The new site – www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk – is visually impressive, which is vital in establishing the gallery as a powerful online brand. It uses a navigation that feels as though you’re peeling back layers of the gallery using a range of their ‘heritage colours’.
This starts with a short video of the outside of the gallery on the homepage which helps to stress the local identity of the gallery. The peeling layers show the full range of activities that the gallery does – rather than just displaying pictures. This includes activities such as school education and community outreach; running competitions and venue hire.
Dulwich Picture Gallery was the first gallery space built specifically for the public in 1811. They have a fabulous collection of art that includes paintings from Rembrandt, Poussin and Van Dyck. The site is integrated with the gallery’s collection management system, KE Emu which means that all these pictures are easily searchable and can all be viewed as high res images.