Link Exchange is a new technique producing supposedly enormous hit ratings. But a hit as such is not worth a thing - well, we'll see. I will continue collecting.

I will appreciate any hints you deliver. New entries will be placed on top so that you can see immediately if it is updated. If you want to be informed, send me a note. For off-line reading I found the tool Webdown. At first I reacted repulsive and confused, now I see that my approach overcharges me: The web is huge, once you found something good you just rush on. Hence I will shorten my comment and put the searcher on his own journey.

03-24-98: ArtSEEnsoHo nEwYOrkCiTy artSeEnSoHo is a virtual cruise through diverse streets in New York with galleries and stores, top addresses. Lifestyle also. Well done. Big thing.

03-18-98: Yesterday I copied with Webdown from Pro Arte - the Austrian Art Sales Index Database a book not yet published: Kurt Rossacher (Graz 1918-1988 Salzburg), Der Mandarin auf der Suche nach der Schönheit (The Mandarin on the Quest for Beauty). A wunderful man, a wunderful book. I am really moved. He knows what quality is! And he acts accordingly, talks about it. I am touched by a Statuette einer Negerin, Umkreis des Georg Petel (Weilheim 1590 - 1634 Augsburg), Birnholz, 19 cm (statue of an black woman), that he discovered. The pages 'Wie ersteigere ich einen Kunstgegenstand' (how to bid for a work of art), 'Kunstsammler und Schatzzwerge - echte und falsche Kunstfreunde' (art collectors and treasure dwarfs - genuine and phoney art lovers) und 'Kunstgeschmack heute' (art taste today) are particularly edifying, funny too. Although not an art historian, I felt particularly addressed by 'Scherzo / Eros und Kunstwissenschaft / Cupido und Kunstbetrachtung / Ein Traktat' (also very funny). As a juvenile, I had the priviledge to be introduced to real art experience (see memoirs).

03-17-98: At yahoo there is a subtopic yahoo.arts with many other subtopics. While surfing, I stopped at Aesthetics On-Line, which is apparently something highly scientific, in the folder Artists I looked for Max Beckmann (Picasso is missing!) and have found among others Max Beckmann: "Departure" - Text, which seems to be a fine student's work. Also Galerie Döbele: Max Beckmann, a page from a well-known German gallery which I really liked.

Mark Harden's texas.net Museum of Art is a wonderful work, manifold, careful and serious, 2000 scans alone, special exhibitions, reviews etc. He has a lot of interesting links, an index too, I looked for Nolde, he had quite a couple of works to offer. There is a sponsoring program also, if you join you get a CD with all the pictures. Webdown is great: Now I see Harden has reviewed several CDs and obviously accepts guest entries. Very serious and worth reading. He also gives harsh comments on bad productions, then brings comments on that. Very good!

From the link list of Harden: Eyes on Art is a program for students of art, if I am correct, and investigates the question: How to educate art, as well aesthetically as practically. This seemed intersting to me (I printed some, have to download it). They have a long list of interesting links too.

CGFA: this is only a mirror site, there is one in Germany also (Bayreuth), but they were busy; it is the site of Carol F. Gerten (Danmark?). She shows app. 5000 scans (540 MB), has an index, there are, as far as I can see, works from 1200 to 1800 or 1900, then it stops (No Beckmann).

From the eminent newspaper "Die Welt", 03-14-98: There is a database with 20.000 works from 2.000 artists (prints or graphic): http://www.artshopping.com. True. They have a big engine, I looked for Baselitz, Otmar Alt, finally some unknown, American sounding Name: there are lists, prices, but no single thumbnail left alone blowups. What does that mean? Is anybody to buy from lists alone?

The internet gallery Botticelli Global Art Management offers besides acquisition of art besides other things arrangement of right of exploitation, public relations, logistic services, archiving and participation in exhibitions. There are representatives for the European countries with whom to negotiate. The contracts are long. Artists have to pay, DM 1.500 for a cheap standard entry. Die list was not long, no name known to me. As contractor you can live from that, you don't even have to sell. To make your own homepage that really shows something is not so hard as it may seem.

The same issue features a long article about the London Blains Gallery with compuserve address. The search engine delivers the homepage at http://www.art-connection.com. This provider has some 50 galleries in stock, Blains too. The many programming bugs set aside, it is comfortable to have the same unser interface for all galleries alike. But then it looks so uniform that I imagine this to be commercially not favorable for the galleries. If I may interpret a note from the provider who points out that somebody only got 2 e-mails per year but sold 4 paintings fromthese 2 e-mails (believe it or not) I would guess that business in this market simply does not yet exist.

It's CeBIT time, and "Die Welt" has a CeBIT-supplement too. They talk a lot about art there! (You got to have some pictures, computing is so dull otherwise.) They refer to 2 sites only. First 3D Café, presenting all the nice new tools for working with digital pictures. That's how the pictures are, partly done with much love and work. Now if you put together the Tour Eiffel from 20.000 matchsticks or build from 20.000 objects a flower with flying dragon sipping at it, where is the difference? To me, I could not find art proper. All the authors of my random test have worked in their free time just for fun, they didn't consider themselves as artist. The results were jsut great under these circumstances. But art?

Then a German site: Vollbild. They print something that surely claims to be art. They even have a contest. Well, let's see. Wasn't that much, rather hobby type except the one chosen for print, a Swiss artist with many exhibitions in museums, art fair Basel etc. Nice home page, done by a commercial Swiss company. How come she hit that place? It turned out that Kolibri is a German search engine having as latest feature a live hitlist of the search entries of the day. Unbelievable: Among the first hundred almost everything piggy stuff (literally translated, means obscene).

ArtNet® is a New York based firm gathering everything connected with the art field. So there are museums, galleries, artists, old art, new art, antiquities, fairs, auctions, exhibitions, organisations, magazines etc. It was here that I realized: an auction catalogue does not give more information as can be given here. So why not try selling art via internet? The fee is $ 2.000 per annum for galleries, the link for artist's fees is missing. I found this site via a gallery in my neighbourhood (Teutloff, Bielefeld), showing US-media artist Lynn Hershman with homepage. The list of artists ist not long, one picture each, international, but not interesting for me.

ARTgate has not been updated for a year; but then it is sponsored by the government of NRW and a Cologne gallery, has links to lists of galleries of Munich and Berlin, but those pages are not done well either. In ARTgate artists and galleries alike can join at will - that is the way it looks like! The pages of the galleries show exhibitions 2 years out of date! Maybe there is some need to get fresh blood there.

artcontent is a Cologne project, a bit poor, mostly links to museums, projects, exhibitions etc. It is possible to get far from here. I.e to

Blitzreview, featuring text only, but very hot, short features regarding exhibitions as well as comments to the actual art business (german only), always signed personally with the option of feedback and mailing of comments of other readers. Or you can jump to

The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Art History, they claim:

Seems to be well done, with scores of information and links. From here to

Why is the Mona Lisa Smiling? A project of students (John F. Kennedy High School, Bronx (NY) /Sweden). Great idea, work for years for teachers and students alike. Very good job as a site, at first glance a bit thin in substance regarding the thesis about Leonardo. The guestbook entry was answered by a teacher referring to his teacher at Graduate School ".. who believes that art is produced when a human reaction is evoked from an artpiece." Pretty simple, then! From this and the comments in the guestbook he concluded that they have created art with that project. I highly disagree. So we entered a discussion.

Artists online, Fine Arts online is a well done, interesting project (multi lingual) from a couple in Berlin, have to look some more, but in two minutes I found out that the exhibition was from august 1997, marked as prolonged. Are they short of themes or resources or what? I got the address from the mailing list of

Deutsches Historisches Museum, German Historical Museum. This is really well done, multi lingual also, by somebody really believing in the internet. Shortly after joining the list I got a mail with a note about a newsgroup discussion showing the political dimension of the net. Great, I am eager to see what will emerge there.

Mail-Druck has nothing to show - but you can drop a message. They print also digitally, with a Xerox machine, interesting for small editions, quite nice quality, not expensive. The colored pages in my books are printed there as well as the post cards. I had to work quite a while to find this solution.