Requirement's for Morton Birkin's Website

By Aonya McCruison and Christina Miller

Basics

Goals

Our client first came up with the idea of starting this website after searching for his father's name on the web and coming up with little to no information about his father or his father's artwork. Our client has now come to us in hopes of rectifying this situation and making sure that his father's legacy is represented on the world wide web. The main purpose of this site will be to create an online gallery of Morton Birkin's artwork, including biographical information about Morton Birkin as it relates to his artwork. This site will be organized so that images of Morton Birkin's works are easy to browse as well specifically search based on dates and key themes. The site will also seek to maintain the protection of images, so that copies of the images can only be obtained by permission.

Audience

Our client was not too specific on who he thought would be coming to a site, but mentioned that he would like the site to accessible to those that were searching for art specifically of the themes of Mr. Birkin's work. For example, if someone was to seach the web for images of Taos, New Mexico, he would hope his father's website, having many images inspired by Taos, would come up. Our client also stated that he would like the site to appeal to general art lovers who just might be browsing through various artists' sites. Finally, our client mentioned that he might be using the site as a resource for galleries he would hope might pick up a show on his father's works.

Site content

While the site's main page will be dedicated to providing some background information on Morton Birkin, the bulk of the site will be dedicated to organizing and displaying the hundreds of works of art from Mr. Birkin's collection. Images will first be organized by medium including: oils, drawings, and watercolors. These sections will be further divided thematically based on the major themes of Morton Birkin's works, including (but not limited to) nudes, Taos, and New York City. These images will then be further categorized by year so that audiences will be able to see how Morton Birkin's depictions of the themes evolved over his life.

Within each theme we will also include anecdotal commentary about why particular themes were of importance to Morton Birkin. These anecdotes will be based on our conversation with David Birkin as well as information provided by Morton Birkin's widow.