Recently, the “Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean“, or “Mudam” for short, opened its doors in Luxembourg City. As you could expect from such a high cost project, they have a website (which apparently has already been online for some time). I usually have a high tolerance rate considering the quality of websites, but nevertheless I absolutely dislike what they have thrown out into the world wide web.
It is absolutely unusable and there is no recognizable layout. Instead,
- the links change size when you move your mouse over them, so that it is almost impossible to select anything.
- the (very few) pictures you see on the site are all in a horribly low resolution.
- the contrast between the text and the background makes most of the content unreadable.
It also seems that the total information content of the website is precisely
zero (meaning you probably will not find the information you are looking for).
Now, it appears to me that the author of that site calls himself an “artist”. Artist usually say something about wanting to trigger a reaction in people.
Well guess what, it triggered a serious reaction in me (called stomach ulcer), but calling this piece of crap “art” is absolutely ridiculous. One had better
take a huge dump on this week’s issue of one’s favourite magazine, take a photograph of it and put that on the web. That will trigger a reaction in people too.
How, oh how can it be that people are paid for doing something like that?
Just a tiny little tip for the board of directors of the “Mudam”: Have a look at the websites of other, larger, museums, like the MoMa in New York: http://www.moma.org/. There you can see what a website is supposed to look like. If you want to attract people to modern art, do so by first of all giving them the information they need in a friendly, usable environment (e.g. the web). I wonder how many people decide not to visit the Mudam, just because they left the website and did not get any information after a few seconds because they thought it was broken.
Finally, I want to give you, as a reader, a little homework: Try to find common information like opening times, adress or phone number on the website of the Mudam. To make it even more difficult, try to complete the task in less than 48 hours.
PS: This text ist “art”. It is supposed to trigger a reaction in people.
When you hover the mouse over any link, it changes its size. What sucks is that certain links move into the next line when you want to click them, leaving just an empty space to click.�
People with epilepsy are not recommended to visit the site. Nice disco-effect though. (Happens when you move your mouse on certain pages).
Apparently, the author had to invest a lot of time finding background-pictures that make it impossible to read any text.�
