Whitney Museum

whitney.org

A long-running collaboration that defined the Whitney’s digital presence.

Outcomes

First public expression of the Whitney’s new identity and new home
Stood up a new digital department at the Whitney
Exhibition pages designed for deep, continuous exploration
Watch and Listen section that supports media discovery
Whitney Stories series that expands the museum’s voice and history

Engagement

Website design and initial build in 2009
Full redesign in 2013
Information architecture and content strategy
Exhibition and media page systems
UX and responsive interaction design
Collaboration with Experimental Jetset and Whitney teams across departments

The Whitney’s website was the first public expression of the museum’s new identity by Experimental Jetset, and the first to introduce the Whitney itself as it transitioned to its new downtown location. Our work began with the design and launch of the site in 2009, followed by a full redesign in 2013. Across both phases, the goal was to give the museum a digital presence that felt alive, flexible, and connected to its exhibitions and programs.

Highly responsive layouts adapt seamlessly from the largest displays to phones, with image-driven pages that remain visually compelling at every scale. The structure of the site supports a continuous reading experience, bringing together images, videos, and text in a way that mirrors the museum’s broad and interdisciplinary programming.

Rich exhibition pages

Exhibition pages bring many types of content into a single long scroll, supported by tabs that allow visitors to either browse or jump directly to what they need. This combination of depth and clarity established a format that could serve exhibitions of every scale, from major retrospectives to focused projects.

Extensive and easy to browse Watch and Listen area

The Watch and Listen section gives the museum a dedicated home for audio and video, organized by category, tag, or artist. Small icons distinguish media types, and each item connects to related exhibitions, artworks, and events, creating an inviting web of discovery across the site.

Whitney Stories

An ongoing series of videos and posts produced and published by Whitney staff help articulate the museum’s institutional history in greater depth while simultaneously relaying the more anecdotal, behind-the-scenes stories that make the museum unique to those who work and exhibit there.