A multi-year strategy for coleccioncisneros.org
The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) is one of the most important collections of Latin American art in the world. Since the 1970s, it has fostered international dialogue about Latin American art and ideas through exhibitions, publications, and grants.
The Challenge
The CPPC was at a crossroads. The collection needed to build a new website, but with this endeavor came big questions. How should the organization tell its story? Who was the key audience? How would they adapt their mission for the 21st Century? And how would the website meet these new goals?
The CPPC approached El Tigre Productions to tackle these questions and create a path forward.
Reinventing a Cultural Leader
We began from the ground up. The CPPC wasn't just building a website, but looking for a way to engage an international community. El Tigre envisioned and implemented a multi-tiered strategy that would make this goal a reality.
Imagining a new website for a new mission
The first step was developing a strategy for what the website should do. We envisioned coleccioncisneros.org as an international cultural hub that published original ideas from the Americas and served as the site of dialogue for the community. Each editorial content type was designed to engage a specific part of the community. We created six distinct content types including Debates, a public forum on issues shaping the field, and Cite, Site, Sights a series of cultural dispatches from the Americas and beyond.
Building audience into our content
In order for the content to be successful we had to engage the community in a meaningful way. To do so, we built the audience right into the content. Almost everything that appears on the site is produced by an international network of contributors. In the site's first year, we worked with over 200 contributors and raised web traffic by over 1,500%.
Rebranding
We re-designed the collection-wide brand including the logo, promotional materials, and all branding for editorial content. We managed the design of the website and ensured that branding synched across all platforms.
Management Systems
Adapting the CPPC's goals for the digital age meant creating new workflows across the whole organization. We developed systems for every stage of production and outreach ensuring the CPPC of quality content over the long run. Our long-term commitment means that the CPPC will be able to adapt their strategy and workflow to each new challenge that arises.
Social Media
Our content strategy accounts for the overall mission of an organization -- not just for a website. We designed the CPPC's outreach and social media strategy to work in concert with all other organization-wide initiatives and designed graphics for social media as well. Since our social media plan was implemented we have tripled the CPPC's Facebook and Instagram followers.
Video Series
One major goal of the website was to make the CPPC's collection accessible to a wider audience than ever before. To achieve this, we conceived and produced the ongoing bilingual web video series Open Storage. The series offers viewers unparalleled access to the artworks and first-hand knowledge about their historical and conceptual importance from experts in the field.
How Can An Artist Show Us Time?
Since 1997, artist José Antonio Suárez Londoño has maintained a daily practice of drawing that presents overlapping visions of time. Join Carrie Cooperider for a journey through the mythology, art history, and current events found within the three books of drawings Suárez Londoño produced in 2003.
Photographing Artworks
Artist Julio Grinblatt photographs other artists' works for the CPPC, his camera stopping a work of art in a moment of its life. In consideration of the way in which most people will view the reproduction, Grinblatt chooses the lightlng and vantage point that best take into account those characteristics which can be seen on a screen.
Who Was Captain Seymour?
For each artwork in the Colección Cisneros there are countless stories waiting to be unearthed. Follow art detective Javier Rivero as he tackles the mystery behind 4 enigmatic watercolors from the 19th Century.
Eight Months on the Orinoco
In under three minutes, Rafael Romero outlines the lengthy 1886 voyage along the Orinoco River undertaken by explorer Jean Chaffanjon and artist Auguste Morisot. Morisot’s documentary sketches and photos create a retrospective travelogue.
How Do You Box Air?
John Robinette, the CPPC Manager of Storage and Installation, explains the intricacies of packing, shipping, and installing the large-scale yet light-weight sculptures of Venezuelan artist Gego.
