Abstract

Museums’ Web sites are becoming increasingly important as Internet accessibility increases across global and socioeconomic boundaries. The Web site often serves as a potential visitor’s first introduction to a particular museum, or even to museums in general. Because of this, it becomes increasingly important for creators of museum Web sites to focus on the message and voice presented in order to control and better their institution’s public image. While an inviting and exciting Web site could draw an influx of visitors, a cold and uninteresting Web site may turn away potential visitors. This paper surveys several museum Web sites as viewed through the lenses of constitutive and invitational rhetoric, and through abridged human-computer interface design critique. By applying constitutive and invitational rhetorical concepts, it becomes possible to understand who the museum’s site is inviting to visit, and who may be left out of the call to benefit from what the institution has to offer. Human computer interface critique is helpful to understand precisely which elements of a Web site do or do not support the museum’s invitation to the public to come to view the collections. Finally, the blending of the human-computer interface lens with the rhetorical lenses creates a useful tool for considering Web sites beyond those specifically discussed.