SMK Open

The art must be set free. This is one of the visions of SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, which holds the entire country’s joint art collection of more than 260,000 works. Anyone visiting the gallery to see all the exhibited works will only have seen 0.7 per cent of the collection, as a total of 99.3 per cent of the collection is in archives in the basement. In order to make this huge inventory accessible in a public online art collection, a website has been developed featuring a design that is clearly shaped by the envisioned function. A purist black-and-white background makes each work stand out concisely, and, with the reduced-scale view, creates a minimalist expression that provides clarity and focus on the many functions through which users can navigate. The advanced search feature makes it possible to search intuitively without having to decide in advance what to look for – be it a motif, artist, colour, period or material. The layout is flexible while the navigation is fluid, so that visitors can at all time clearly see the result of their choices.