- Organization Name:
- Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art
- Describe your creative piece – what is it and what has it been used for, and why is it innovative?
- Our new website brands us as the National Center for preserving, viewing, and learning about Exceptional Agrarian Art. We use the site as our face to art collector-donors, foundations, philanthropists, potential sponsors, visitors, patrons, other art museums, and potential major artist-exhibitors. We are now able to do business with these parties as if we had been around for 20 years instead of just 2 years. At less cost than advertisements and mailings, our very visual professionally designed site tells our visual art museum story to a world-wide art community.
- What issue or problem were you working to address with this piece?
- Some other art museums would not lend art or joint venture with us. Some nationally known artists were reluctant to exhibit here. Some art collectors were reluctant to loan or donate art. The new website is designed to vigorously attract financial support from philanthropists, foundations and other potential donors. This website will be attractive to potential sponsors for exhibitions. It will give us a more desirable image as a tourist destination, attracting more visitors who use the web to find travel destinations. To do business and achieve our mission, we had to have a very visual, first class art museum web site. Adobe products such as Illustrator and Dreamweaver were essential in doing this.
- How has your submission successfully impacted your organization’s ability to solve this issue/problem?
- Examples of success: We just booked our major blockbuster 2011 traveling exhibition, Dale Nichols, Transcending Regionalism, with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. We’re now working with the South Dakota Art Museum and the A. R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art on a major exhibition of the work of A. R. Mitchell (1889-1977), student of South Dakota’s Harvey Dunn (1884-1952), the father of American Agrarian Art. A new potential lender is considering loaning us the work of major American artist Birger Sandzen (1871-1954) because they saw us through the website as a professional organization. Professionals in the arts have complimented the new web design. We have become a desirable venue for major national artists to exhibit in our Featured Artist exhibition gallery. While the web site is still undergoing final finishing redesign, we already have the above growing list of successes due to the new site.
