Cyrus Tang Hall of China Microsite

Opened in the summer of 2015, Cyrus Tang Hall of China was the Field’s first permanent exhibition since 2011. Covering 9,000 square feet of the museum, the exhibit invites you to experience China’s history, contained in more than 350 objects that range from a 27-foot-long scroll to two-ton spirit stones that you’d find in classical Chinese gardens.

Studio Pax was hired to create a website designed to entice visitors to experience the live exhibition. Working in collaboration with strategists, writers, and developers from the Field Museum digital arm, we carefully planned, designed and crafted the conversion of the China exhibition into a compelling component of the customer’s journey.

Convey the experience of the exhibit

By showcasing the beauty of the exhibition itself through the depiction of the actual galleries, a strategic goal was to convey a sense of the experience of visiting China Hall at The Field Museum tempered by a contemporary identity for the website.

We also used the website as a digital hub alerting viewers to the wealth of related material: the extensive digital catalog of the exhibit, complementary educational content, how to plan a visit, and multiple publications.

Transforming Viewers into Visitors through Content

Conceived, written, designed and constructed by The Field Museum, The Cyrus Tang Hall of China exhibition is based principally on the extensive Field Museum collections. The website takes this unique opportunity to engage visitors in a behind-the-scenes approach revealing the different facets of the institution. Never-before-seen views and explanations of the artifacts, multiple researcher interviews and insights into the process of creating the exhibition punctuate this digital presentation.

To better comprehend how viewers use the website and the opportunities to engage the audience better, we implemented a series of complex interactive analytics mechanisms to understand how the website performs in terms of metrics and conversion so that future microsites can be better built.