I suppose any museum website could be considered a “public history” website. Having said this, the Museum of the Moving Image website is one I spend plenty of time perusing. This institution has been my dream place of employment for going on ten years now, but when I’m not obsessively checking the job listings, I find plenty of other reasons to poke around.
The museum itself has recently received a well publicized renovation. Though I have not had the chance to visit the new space, I noticed their website had also received an image overhaul in the past year or so. As far as museum websites go, this is one of the better ones I have seen. It’s stylish, pleasing to the eye, and easy to navigate. The necessary links used to make way around the website are prominently displayed below the heading, and beneath this, current happenings at the museum receive center stage, taking up most of the page.
I would say the most noteworthy feature of the Museum of the Moving Image’s website, is their collections page. If the definition of public history, at its most basic, is to make history accessible to as wide an audience as possible, this museum has done a splendid job of making its holdings- the self-professed “nation’s largest and most comprehensive collection of artifacts relating to the art, history, and technology of the moving image”- available to the public. You can then browse the rich array of digitized artifacts- 6,831 of the museum’s 130,000 in total- by filtering your search through both “artifact class” and by “collection subset.”
Wow- aesthetically speaking that website is totally my jam. I think if your museum is focused on images, you have to set the bar pretty high!