First UK arts organisations adopt ‘.art’ domain

The first UK organisations to adopt the ‘.art’ website domain have been announced, including Tate, The Art Newspaper, and the Stern Pissarro Gallery.

They will join 60 other arts organisations, including the Centre Pompidou, Creative Time, the Guggenheim Museum and Syndicat National des Antiquaires, which have also signed up to adopt the domain.

“.ART provides a new way for the art world to identify online,” said John Matson, CEO of .ART, which founded the domain. “The domain is short, simple, memorable, and has immediate association with the arts. For our early adopters, a ‘.art’ domain is a natural expression of their brand.”

New root

The ‘top-level’ domain – a root for all other webpages – will be used by some arts organisations for their whole website, and for others to showcase specific content.

Stern Pissarro Gallery has migrated completely from pissarro.com to pissarro.art, while the Foundation Cartier is to retain its ‘.com’ site and use the new ‘.art’ domain to make its collection publicly available for the first time.

ICANN-registered cultural organisations can register for the domain between December 2016 and February 2017. From then, art-related not-for-profits, museums, institutions, galleries and artists will be invited to apply, before the domain is opened to the general public from May 2017.

Official pricing for the domain is set to be released in January.

A .ART spokesperson added: “Our vision is to responsibly advance the art world through technology and creativity, uniting arts industries under one top-level domain and shaping a community. .ART provides a new way for the art world to identify online. Our aim is to provide utility to preserve our cultural heritage.”

Sector response

Dominique Chevalier, President of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, explained his organisation’s rationale for adopting the domain. “For us, and for our galleries, ‘.com’ is too commercial and ‘.fr’ is too generic. The problem with most domain names is that they don’t say anything about the business that you do, ‘.art’ solves that.”

Lélia Pissarro, co-owner of Stern Pissarro Gallery, said ‘.com’ “lacked elegance”, and that having the possibility to use ‘pissarro.art’ is the “perfect solution”. “It fills a long lasting gap in our marketing strategy and the way we project ourselves,” she said.

Digital Director at Tate, Ros Lawler, said the galleries are “delighted to take part in the launch of this new domain, which will help promote some of the world’s greatest art collections, galleries and museums”.

But others have not yet committed to the domain. The National Gallery said it is “examining many options for future development of the National Gallery website”, confirming that it had not yet made a decision.