Digital Innovation of the Year

Athena Art Foundation

Established by a consortium of academics, gallerists and social media experts, the Athena Art Foundation is a UK-based charity seeking to widen understanding of and interest in art produced before the 20th century. Articles and other resources published on its online hub and shared through its social media channels are thoughtfully designed to cater alike to generalists, specialists and, crucially, new audiences.

Tappling (2020), Mark Greenfield. William Turner Gallery. Courtesy Athena Art Foundation

Digital Benin

Previous efforts have been made to document the Benin Bronzes, but this is the first comprehensive catalogue of more than 5,240 known artefacts from the West African Kingdom of Benin. The catalogue can be filtered by category in both English and Edo as well as by provenance and institution, with a page dedicated to oral testimonies from Edo sources.

Leopard (1550–1680), Edo artist. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Franz Kline Paintings, 1950–1962

The first catalogue raisonné of Kline’s painting is the result of five years’ research by Robert S. Mattison, in cooperation with the artist’s estate and with the Hauser & Wirth Institute. Published online using the Navigating.art platform, it compiles the 257 oil paintings created in the years between Kline’s debut solo exhibition in 1950 and his untimely death in 1962.

Untitled (1951), Franz Kline. Courtesy the Montana Historical Society

Lux: Yale Collections Discovery

This new platform brings together more than 17 million objects from the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Peabody Museum and Yale University Library. The database has open access at its heart, with the vast majority of materials freely available to download, while the powerful search function enables users to discover new relationships between objects and records.

Astrolabe (1537), Georg Hartmann. Yale Peabody Museum. Photo: Lorenz, R. A., 2015

Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru

The opening this February of a new institution to house the extensive collection of industrialist Abhishek Poddar was no mean feat in itself. Yet the museum has also found the means to create a stylish and comprehensive website, allowing a wider audience to browse the full 60,000-strong collection – which ranges from 10th-century sculpture to Bollywood memorabilia – and participate in educational courses online.

Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru. Photo: © Iwan Baan

Voices of the Forgotten: Digital Holocaust Museum

When Epic Games launched its Unreal Editor for Fortnite – enhancing the general public’s ability to design new worlds within the video game, which has more than 400 million users – designer Luc Bernard was inspired to create a digital Holocaust Museum that would be available to ‘everyone, worldwide, free of cost’. The virtual installation allows visitors to interact with personal testimonies of the Holocaust.

Voices of the Forgotten: Digital Holocaust Museum. Courtesy Voices of the Forgotten