New Museum. Transforming Digital Engagement

For almost five decades, the New Museum has been a pioneer at the intersection of art, technology, and culture. Facing the challenge of making contemporary art more accessible and engaging, the New Museum partnered with Athletics to revitalize its visual identity and redesign its institutional website using WordPress VIP. The new website, with its enhanced storytelling and vibrant community focus, serves as a dynamic platform to connect local and global audiences with contemporary art.

The TL;DR

1. Headless WordPress architecture provides scalability, enhanced performance, and seamless integration with the New Museum’s expanding digital and physical infrastructure.
2. The flexibility of the block editor on WordPress enabled a smooth transition from a custom CakePHP CMS, allowing content creators to manage and update content with ease and efficiency.
3. Significant improvements in operational efficiency were achieved by leveraging WordPress VIP’s robust infrastructure, streamlining tasks from local development all the way to deployment.
4. Lower total cost of ownership due to the scalability and ease of use of the WordPress VIP platform, reducing long-term maintenance and operational expenses.
5. Enhanced security and stability, supported by WordPress VIP’s enterprise-grade features, ensuring the New Museum’s digital presence is both reliable and secure.

The New Museum needed to address a significant challenge: how to make its vast program of contemporary art more accessible and engaging for a broader audience. The existing website, built on a custom CakePHP CMS, lacked the flexibility and scalability required to meet the evolving needs of a modern, digital-first audience. With ambitions to expand both its physical and digital presence, the New Museum required a platform that could support a seamless, immersive user experience while providing robust tools for content management and development.

A Bold Migration to WordPress VIP.

Athletics undertook a full migration of the New Museum’s website from a custom CakePHP CMS to WordPress VIP. This transition was not just about changing platforms, it was a strategic move to harness WordPress VIP’s powerful features and build a scalable, future-ready digital ecosystem. With integrated hosting that combines a PHP backend and Node frontend, a customized Elasticsearch integration, and an ecosystem of fine-tuned plugins, the WordPress VIP offering elevated the experience for both editors and visitors. The migration involved moving thousands of pieces of content, including over 500 exhibitions and thousands of events, to a new, more flexible CMS.

Key to the success of this project was WordPress VIP’s custom Command Line Interface (CLI) function. This feature allowed the development team to create a local development environment that mirrored the WordPress VIP environment, ensuring a smooth transition and high-quality code deployment. The VIP architecture provided robust continuous development and integration tools, enabling the team to focus on creating a bespoke front-end experience that met the New Museum’s unique needs.

The redesigned website is a gateway to the New Museum’s rich and dynamic programming. Athletics expanded the existing design system, creating a versatile digital environment that supports image, text, and multimedia content in a cohesive, engaging way. The new site design reflects the museum’s vibrant community, with a fresh color palette and a focus on placing people at the center of the art experience.

The website’s enhanced utility is seen in features like the new exhibition lander, which surfaces related content and supplemental resources, making contemporary art more approachable and understandable. Whether users are visiting the museum in person or exploring from afar, the site provides context-rich experiences that deepen their connection to the art and the institution.

Bold, Scalable, and Holistic.

The result is a design system and website that not only meet the New Museum’s current needs but are also scalable for the future. From interior signage to digital content, the refreshed experience reflects the museum’s mission of creating intersections and awakenings through contemporary art. The website now serves as a central hub for the New Museum’s global audience, offering a seamless, immersive experience that aligns with the museum’s expansion plans.

As the New Museum prepares to double its exhibition space with its OMA-designed building expansion, the new website and design system are perfectly positioned to support this growth. WordPress VIP provided the robust, scalable foundation needed to tackle this monumental project, ensuring that the New Museum remains at the forefront of art, technology, and culture for decades to come.