Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

The Lucas Museum is more a cultural destination dedicated to storytelling than a conventional art museum. The website needed to reflect this. Our work establishes the museum as an accessible cultural space for everyone, across ages and backgrounds, and introduces audiences to the museum whether they plan to visit in person or not. Building on the visual identity created by 2x4, we extended the brand into digital as its first fully realized expression.

Immersive imagery, video, and a custom motion language inspired by the building’s architecture translate the museum’s spatial and emotional qualities into an experiential online presence. Narrative art is presented through highly visual interactions that invite exploration and personal interpretation. The site also reflects the museum’s unique curation, allowing users to explore artworks through thematic lenses in addition to art historical periods and other traditional categorizations.

Building the site prior to the opening of the museum meant we had to design the site to accommodate three distinct phases: pre-launch, opening, and post-launch.

As a highly anticipated institution preparing to open, the site needed to introduce the museum’s offerings, drive membership, and generate excitement. Nearing the opening date, the site needed to seamlessly path users into ticketing flows and clearly provide logistical details to help users navigate the in-person experience.  After launch, the site becomes a robust digital platform for continued storytelling, ticketing, and exploration of the collection.

In collaboration with the Lucas Museum team and their partners, we built the museum’s digital infrastructure, setting the foundation for their digital presence for years to come. It was critical that we create a flexible infrastructure designed for change.

Built on Twill CMS, the museum's new platform enables the team to update content easily and frequently, supporting an institution that is constantly evolving. Block-based templates with minimal content hierarchy give the team freedom to evolve pages, navigation, and storytelling over time without feeling constrained.

Finally, the platform establishes the infrastructure required to bring the collection online. Collection data is integrated directly via the NetX API, with zoomable assets enabled through IIIF via a serverless IIIF implementation, ensuring the museum can continue expanding its digital presence as the collection and institution grow.