Architecture
www.architecture.org
Perfect for the architectural tourist, the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s site tells you how to see buildings on foot and by bus, bicycle and boat. Tour locations and times are noted. Tour subjects range from skyscrapers to the city’s neighborhoods.
www.architecture.about.com
One of the most comprehensive sites on architecture, it offers an encyclopedic mix of architectural news, links to building types and how-tos on everything from finding an architect to learning how old your house is.
www.archinform.de
Done in both German and English, it claims to be the largest database for international architecture, with more than 8,800 entries and a strong focus on 20th Century buildings. Bare-boned but solid.
www.greatbuildings.com
A fine place to go for the basics, as well as short commentaries, on buildings both recent and ancient. It tells you, among other things, the architect, the building’s location, its materials, even its climate.
www.worldstallest.com and www.skyscraperpage.com
For skyscraper junkies. The first site focuses on buildings 1,000 feet or higher; the second includes buildings of lesser height.
— Blair Kamin
Classical music
www.classical.net
With 4,800 files and more than 2,600 links, this site provides useful information on everything from building a basic CD library to composers’ works and biographies to locating hard-to-find books and scores, plus more than 1,000 reviews.
www.musicalamerica.com
This online version of the late lamented national magazine is a goldmine of classical music industry news, reviews, features, schedules, press releases, etc. With a subscription ($9.95 a month), you can search the listings of Musical America.
www.bbc.co.uk/radio3
Leave it to the Brits to come up with this info-packed site of audio clips, disc-ographies, CD reviews, composer-of-the-week profiles and “Discovering Music with Leonard Slatkin,” which has hours of audio with commentary by the conductor.
www.casema.net/ribbens/classic
Download broadcasts from nearly 70 classical radio stations worldwide, from Adelaide to Reykjavik.
classicalusa.com
This anthology destination allows you to browse hundreds of music links in the U.S. and Britain, along with high fidelity, film and radio sites, newsgroups and discussion lists.
— John von Rhein
Dance
www.joffrey.com
Information on performances, bios of dancers and plenty of photographs showcase this world-class ballet company.
www.abt.org
The American Ballet Theatre’s comprehensive site includes synopses of major ballets plus a gallery of pictures.
www.dancemagazine.com
The nation’s top dance periodical features interviews, feature articles and reviews.
www.danceonline.com
Heavy on New York information, this site also contains dance news, reviews and a list of great links.
www.dancescape.com
A site devoted to the colorful world of competitive ballroom dancing.
— Lynn Voedisch
Jazz
www.allmusic.com
The single best jazz discography online, with ratings of recordings by virtually every worthwhile artist, as well as articles and commentary.
www.nwu.edu/wnur/jazz
An indispensable source on the jazz avant-garde, with portraits, stylistic analysis and recording and performance information.
www2.kansascity.com/kcjazz
One of the most readable music sites on the Web (officially titled Jazz Ambassador Magazine) handsomely documents mainstream jazz past and present with CD reviews, articles and musician interviews.
www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/cja
The next best thing to visiting the Chicago Jazz Archive (at the University of Chicago) is visiting this site, which offers a guide to the archive and provides exceptional links to jazz societies and research centers.
www.cbmr.org
Jazz, blues, gospel, R&B and other genres share immutable roots, and these are nobly explored on the Web site of the Center for Black Music Research; especially valuable for its lists of recommended reading.
— Howard Reich
Literary
www.libyrinth.com
Aim your cursor at the whirlpool and fling yourself into artistic communion with the likes of James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Franz Kafka, Umberto Eco and others who, as the site says, “employ many winding paths through a shifting veil of reality.”
www.heelstone.com/meridian/
Wondering about women’s work on the Web? Wonder no more: This site is chockablock with hypertext fiction, art, poetry, literary criticism and musings by female artists. Invigorating visuals abound.
www.ryman-novel.com/
You’re on the London Underground. No, you’re sitting at your computer. No, you’re doing both -thanks to this intriguing site that uses the British subway as a controlling metaphor for its hypertext hijinks.
bartleby.com/cambridge/
Got a hypertext headache? Jettison the New and return to the Old, to grave, stately, ponderous and reliable essays about the Great Men (and begrudingly, the occasional woman) of Anglo-Saxon letters, along with the literary ages that begat them. You can practically hear the leather creaking and the brandy swirling about in snifters.
www.pantheon.org
You’re sure it was Apollo or maybe it was Zeus. Got your mythological wires crossed? This site features “5,700 definitions of gods and godesses, supernatural beings and leg-endary creatures and monsters from all over the world.” Maybe it was Vulcan, after all.
— Julia Keller
Movies
us.imdb.com
Say goodbye to wondering “Where have I seen that actor before?” The Internet Movie Database allows you to call up the cast and crew of just about every movie ever released and then click on each person’s complete filmography. It also gives movies’ MPAA ratings and the explanations behind them.
www.roughcut.com/today/hot.button
David Poland can get awfully self-indulgent about the poor plight of Internet film columnists, but writing about 3,000 words a day, six days a week for TNT’s so-so Rough Cut site, he deserves some slack. He’s best at cutting through Hollywood smokescreens for savvy behind-the-scenes analysis.
www.variety.com
Although you don’t get the full stories (those are available for a fee at Variety Extra), the Web site of Hollywood’s leading trade magazine offers timely reports on the movie biz without the fluff.
www.indiewire.com
If you’re more interested in independent and international films than updates on celebrity shenanigans, check out indieWIRE. It runs thoughtful interviews with filmmakers and others in the industry plus reports and reviews from various film festivals.
www.darkhorizons.com
Like Ain’t It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com), the easier-to-navigate Dark Horizons specializes in rumors about and advance-screening reviews of films. It also provides downloadable clips for those who can’t wait for the movies to be released.
— Mark Caro
Performance art
www.sirius.com/(tilde)jenny/PAF/performanceartfront.html
Listings a-go-go.
www.brightlightsfilm.com/24/athey.html
Ron Athey, the bad boy of performance art keeps a good page not just on his own antics but also his current controversies. A good stop to find out what’s on the edge.
http://thing.at/performance-index/kugel.html
Collection of bios, articles, reviews, events, listings and links.
www.syntac.net/hoax/perfart.html
Performance hoaxes. This site is a great resource for art that violates social con-tracts, with material about artists from Abbie Hoffman to the Guerrilla Girls.
— Achy Obejas
Pop music
www.ubl.com
The ultimate band list provides links to every artist’s Web site you could imagine.
www.sonicnet.com
The best site for daily news updates from the music world.
www.reality.sgi.com/relph/chalkhills
For fans of the rock band XTC, and an excellent model for any band to follow in creating its own site.
www.okayplayer.com
Another stellar artists-run site, this one for fans of hip-hoppers the Roots and Common, and R&B singer D’Angelo.
www.salon.com
Excellent, long-form music criticism from stellar writers such as Greil Marcus.
— Greg Kot
Television
www.ultimatetv.com
A good place to go for the latest in TV news, this was my at-work home page even before it became part of the Tribune Co. empire.
www.poynter.org/medianews
Formerly Jim Romenesko’s MediaGossip.com, this addictive site provides fresh links daily to articles about issues in media, including TV.
www.tvguide.com
The popular magazine’s Web outpost is worthwhile more for the site’s features than the news.themes.editthispage.com
Annoy or stump your pals with this rich collection of TV theme songs available for download.
www.pbs.org
PBS is leading the way in using the Web to amplify the programs it airs, allowing surfers to learn much more about a subject.
— Steve Johnson
www.ultimatetv.com
UltimateTV not only has background lists of TV shows, as well as related Web sites, but it also contains press releases from broadcast and cable networks, TV news updates throughout the day, links to network sites, and lots more. It’s invaluable.
www.tvguide.com
Not as extensive as UltimateTV, this still has the latest TV news (as well as overall entertainment news) that always changes from one day to the next. The site also has interviews, TV schedule guides and previews of TV Guide stories.
www.mrshowbiz.com
Great for getting news from the world of show business, including a lot of television-related information. Anyone who covers entertainment news seems to find out what’s going on from Mr. Showbiz.
www.eonline.com
Another good site for the latest about TV in general, but entertainment overall.
www.imdb.com
Although this site is primarily about motion pictures, I use it to get details about TV movies. It also has bios on celebritiesboth in front of and behind the camera.
— Allan Johnson
Theater
www.whatsonstage.com
A thorough, full-service site for theater buffs interested in what’s going on in London and other English cities: News, reviews, feature stories, ticket ordering forms and a schedule. It will even lay out what’s on stage in London during a particular period.
www.playbill.com
The best package among several sites (theatre.com is a worthy competitor) devoted to news, gossip and listings for theater in New York, both Broadway and off-Broadway, with other listings for regional playhouses, U.S. tours and London. Tickets can be ordered through Tele-Charge.
www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/
A daunting amount of information and commentary on the arts; it could take hours to sample one day’s worth of the articles culled from print and electronic sources. “Arts Journal,” under “Recommended,” is particularly helpful and au courant.
www.theaterchicago.org
A site set up by the service organization League of Chicago Theatres, somewhat skimpy at this time but promising a full on-line schedule of Chicago theater attractions this spring. Meanwhile, there is information on the Hottix discount ticket booths and a rundown of all participating League theaters, with their individual Web sites.
www.Francelink.com
A small treasury of information on the arts in Paris; it contains a daily electronic edition of the newspaper Le Monde (in French), plus, under the “Cinema” heading, compre-hensive descriptive listings for art and the performing arts prepared by the magazine PariScope and the electronic CompuServe.
— Richard Christiansen
Visual art
www.bnf.fr
Content, not technology, is the thing:
The National Library of France presents a virtual tour in French of one of the most beautiful, touching exhibitions at the end of the cen-tury, “Marcel Proust: Writing and the Arts.”
diacenter.org
For more than 25 years, one of the greatest supporters of cutting-edge art in America exhibits 15 pioneering artists’ projects for the Web it commissioned since 1995.
ArtandCulture.com
A dazzling first Web guide that interconnects visual arts, performing arts, design, literature, music and film.
dogbert.abebooks.com
Quick access to art books of all kinds old, new, limited edition, out-of-print -from more than 5,000 booksellers worldwide.
atomfilms.com
A huge, indispensable showcase of independent filmmakers, presenting countless works not shown anywhere else.
— Alan G. Artner
World music
www.surfchina.com/html/
artsandculture-perfomingarts-music
Everything from Chinese classical music to traditional ehru to MTV/Chinese.
www.africanmusic.org-ency
The encyclopedia of African music and its diaspora, it lists genres, artists and countries and offers up links aplenty.
www.bollywood2000.com
Indian, Pakistani, Banghra music downloads, plus soundtracks and gossip about Bollywood films and stars.
www.ceolas.org/ceolas.html
The master source for Celtic music on the Internet, with databases, links, events calendars and the works.
www.webring.org/cgi-bin/
webring ing=musica;list
Links warehouse to all sorts of Latin music, from salsa to Tex Mex to tango to nueva trova and rock en espanol.
— Achy Obejas.
WHAT MAKES A WELL-DESIGNED SITE?
Nathan Lenkowski, a 21-year-old Web designer and student, suggests nine points to look for.
Hierarchical layout: Allows users to get information they want without going through information they don’t want.
Fundamental design: Color scheme, text layout, graphic layout, interface; all have to work together visually.
Dynamics: Animation and sound should be used so the page is not static; more than just text and still images.
Navigation: The site should be clear and easy to get around for advanced as well as new users.
Flow: Site should have a uniform look in color, fonts and layout; shouldn’t change drastically from page to page.
Download time: Any more than 30 seconds or, maximum, one minute and the user will not wait.
Interactivity: Engage users to participate by giving rewards for clicking through-out the page and following the links.
Relevance: How well do the elements of the site fit its specific purpose?
Return time: Site has to be interesting enough to convince users to come back after initial visit.
