Creative, engaging ways to implement an art gallery?

[poesu]

For context. There're lots of artists on Mastodon that I want to check on, but damn do I not like the act of scrolling. It just doesn't work for me overall, and I also feel like I'm not engaging with their art at all, just browse "pretty pictures."

I think this issue can affect indie web galleries too. I think social media conditioned us to construct our pages in the same way — merely a grid of pictures. I wonder if there's another way or am I just overthinking?

Looking at my own site, I don't feel like I'm motivated to dwell on each piece; I can mindlessly scroll down. Now, if I go to a physical art gallery or museum, I spend time with every picture. I approach them one by one; I, obviously, can't just glance at all of them at once and move on with my life.

Of course, that depends on the art and I can't make everyone stay with each artwork if they don't really vibe with it. But can I at least make the gallery itself work in an interesting way, be more than a Pinterest/Instagram grid? Have you encountered/made any unusual and unique galleries that you can link for inspiration?

[IndigoGolem]

If the issue is the layout of the page, there are options. Simple things like a grid, carousel, deck of cards you draw from, etc. If you want something more like a real gallery/museam, you could try doing something like TheFrugalGamer did, or if you're really good at CSS you can try to replicate the 3D spaces in corru.observer that it uses for some gameplay.

I have not made a gallery myself. I don't do much art, and my site's Art page mostly just has a couple old experimental pages linked like normal pages rather than embedded in any kind of gallery.

Looking at your site, i see what you mean about browsing pictures. I like your art, but i do find myself just skimming every picture instead of really focusing on the details of one. I wonder how much of that is the density of works. At any point in your site's home page, there are several pictures i could look at, and it's really easy to jump quickly from one new thing to another.

A simpler option than the 3D gallery stuff i mentioned earlier is to just put a lot of blank space between pictures, so people have to scroll to get from one to another and there's only one thing to focus on at a time.

I don't know what one sollution to offer. I think you should try a few options and see what works, what you like best. That's usually the best way to figure out design choices, i think.

[chilblands]

You can make a big fake png wall that imitate museum galleries and to navigate you drag the screen. Then when you click on it a modal pop up with alt text and description

[Rubbereon]

This was recommended to me when >I asked about a similar issue, so might as well let you know about Masonry.

https://masonry.desandro.com/

It basically does what you want.

You can use flex grids for a native option supported by all modern browsers.

[sphinx]

The plain grid gallery approach you're talking about predates social media, I think.

Whenever I took guidance from art teachers in high school and college (2003-2009) they always said that your page should be short and sweet. Display the art together neatly and plainly so that the art speaks for itself without distraction. Your gallery should be quick and easy to look through with minimal to no "speed bumps". This was taught with job-hunting in mind, mostly. The second someone from The New Yorker or Disney (or whoever) has to click an extra thing or find a different page or wait to open up an image, they've lost interest and moved on to the next applicant. Time is money.

For those reasons, my very first art portfolio site was a plain white page with minimal text or pages, and the home page was the portfolio. In basic grid format. With a mouse-over effect that quickly enlarged each picture. My contact information displayed clearly at the bottom. Oh, and select only 9 of your best works to display so it's a nice clean symmetrical grid and they don't have to scroll. Scrolling is bad! It felt like a glorified business card. My art was there, sure, but my spirit wasn't. I hated it.

This would've been around 2006-'07, but it seemed like it was trending for several years before that. Social media was in its infancy maybe, but hadn't really taken off yet. Not as we know it today. You would think at a time when pages were at their most vibrant that art pages would be too, but in student & professional spaces there was this big push to go REAAALLY boring minimalist with it. This was a time when new-kid-on-the-block Facebook was still kooky-crazy with graffiti widgets and stickers and all manner of fun sillyness. But nope. My page had to be plain grid because professional norms said so. It feels like the nature of the web has completely inverted since then.

Once again, I have rambled in circles. But I hope you'll find a useful nugget or two in there.

[Noah_S]

I have jigsaws with my drawings. And in the extended gallery I've written a bit about all of them. I do think spacing them out more helps.