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More and more category specific community sites bubble to the surface since the arts have embraced Web 2.0. There is Your Gallery from Saatchi, with the student spin-off Stuart. Both are designed for new artists to exhibit their work.

ExhibitFiles, “a community site for exhibit designers and developers,” launched in April. Built for museum professionals, it now has 225 members.

Re!ease01 is for both the art professional and the artist. The site’s design and architecture are a bit messy. Although it was launched in the summer of 2006, it still has the appearance of the perpetual beta. Then again, whoever said MySpace looked attractive?

The Museums and the Web conference also had an interactive platform, where participants could blog and discuss about the lectures and workshops. This was quite a nice tool to use, whilst listening to the speakers. This is seen more and more, not just on these conferences but also in universities: a real time online discussion that is fed back into the room.

The last one in this category is artCloud. This is a not yet active network of self-proclaimed “veterans of the art world”, in collaboration with The Art Newspaper. It promises to launch in days.

What is next? A social network for restorators? Archaeologists? Art dealers? Share your examples please.

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Phil Mooney’s office was a virtual museum when he started 30 years ago as archivist for the Coca-Cola Co. So many people tramped through to look at the vintage bottles, trays and calendars that he had it all removed so he could get some work done.

“I said that if a museum was important, my office wasn’t the place for it,” he remembers. “We needed a real museum.”

He got his wish. Twice.

Read full article (AJC.com, May 21, 2007)
World of Coca-Cola website