ArtandCulture.com

ArtandCulture.com presents an interconnected guide to all the arts, offering information about artists and movements in the Design Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, and Visual Arts. Learn more than about that individual artist or movement; learn about the relation to other artists and movements across the disciplines.

The content is limited to a basic selection of artists and movements (only 43 architects and 26 photographers represent their fields). The short articles are well written, with good in-site and off-site links. I hope the material will grow in the future.

The best thing is the three-way navigation scheme: you can search for keywords, browse subject lists, and (most innovative) follow a chain of conceptual associations with the Cloud. As the site explains, the Cloud allows you to experience the context of an artist or movement. Click on anything in the Cloud — an artist’s name, a movement, or a keyword — and that item moves to the centre of a new Cloud. Try it here with the Pablo Picasso Cloud.



The Cloud reminds me of the ThinkMap application used in the Smithsonian’s experimental Revealing things website.