The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's ArtScope is a great example of an innovative approach to bringing a museum's collection to the Web. ArtScope is a visual browsing tool comprised of a thumbnail grid displaying 3,500 works from the SFMOMA's permanent collection. The grid is zoomable, displaying a lens which can be moved over it to magnify certain areas, enabling users to view hundreds of artworks simultaneously, or just one at a time in close detail.

     More interestingly, ArtScope also provides a search tool, and below it a pane displaying information about the artwork at the center of the lens (the artwork information is displayed even if you are fully zoomed out). You can type anything into the search field: artist name, title, date, medium, keywords, etc. If any results match your search phrase, ArtScope moves the lens (maintaining the same level of zoom) to the first match. If more than one result exists for your term, a navigation bar displays the number of the result you are currently viewing, the total number of results, and arrow buttons that enable you to jump to the other matches within the grid. It's fun typing in a term like "1970" or "Acrylic on canvas", and then flying around the grid via the arrow keys to view all the results in their scattered locations.

See more information from the web site about these types of programs at the link below or just view the SFMOMA ArtScope page

db.tidbits.com/article/10212

www.sfmoma.org/projects/artscope/