Hot list.

Unless you've got an ISDN hookup, or even a T3, looking at art on the Web is still a band-width hogging, patience-testing, time-eating affair - like leafing through an art book after a three-year-old with a mouthful of gum and a lollipop in both hands has Just read It. You know there's amazIng stuff waiting there, it's just so . . . difficult . . . to get the pages unglued. Still, when you consider the amazing popularity of, for instance, Web porn sites, which have really slow servers because of the sheer volume of people trying to access the plc of the week (you know who you are), obviously the will is there. It's just a matter of finding stuff worth waiting for. This month, in accordance with the time-honored belief that media should both entertain and edify, we're featuring visually Intelligent sites that are at least as interesting as Ms. or Mr. Babe of the Day.

THE UFFIZI GALLERY (http://www.televisual.it/uffizi/): This museum site Is done the way you really want to see museum sites done: sumptuous pictures, excellent commentary, and a strong sampling of works from the collection. If you fill out the registration form, you can download high-quality images of selected works (so now I have Caravaggio wallpaper for my desktop). You can tour the galleries by moving from room to room or, less traditionally, by selecting a historical period or accessing an Index of artists. Not, obviously, as good as being there, but still a nice way to check out some of the greatest paintings ever.

FLUXUS ONLINE (http://www.panlx.com/~fluxus/): When you think about it, Ftuxus is perfect for the Web - with Its embrace of multimedia extravaganzas, reliance on chance, and constant pranksterism ("hey, my browser crashed again!"), the WWW is already tapped into the spirit. This site provides an excellent overview of Mr. Maclunas' still-active group, with Images of work in pretty much every medium - 2-D, 3-D, sound, video. There's also an excellent Fluxus-style, carnival-colored navigation map at the beginning to help you get around and see the work of Nam June Palk, Joseph Beuys, et al.

JUAN MUNOZ (http://www.diacenter.org/exhlbs/munoz/project/index.html): While there are a lot of artists' projects on the Web (Julia Scher's Securityland on adaweb Is a longtime standout), the Juan Munoz site is a paradigm for the way preexisting installation art, in particular, should be documented on the Internet: beautiful photography, a great navigation map, and source material that actually enriches your understanding of the work itself. Of course, the Dia site has a history of being one of the better Institutional addresses on the Net, providing information yOU expect to find (schedules, etc.) along with thoughtful collaborations like this one.

WAXWEB (http://bug.village.virginia.edu): Not, strictly speaking, a site about art, this mammoth (over 25,000 hyperlinks and 90 minutes of video) project based on a movie of the same name constitutes a Web-based work of art in its own right. Shuttling back and forth through time, perspectives, and media, Waxweb tells the story of James Hive-maker and his grandson Jacob as they raise plague-proof Mesopotamian bees and look for a way to communicate with the spirits of the dead. You can move through the narrative In a variety of ways: by selecting keywords and following the thread of certain concepts, clicking on pictures, or virtually pressing a few navigational buttons (there's also a VRML interface, although that wasn't running when I visited).

AMERICAN MEMORY (http://Icweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amnewhome.html): Hey, you already paid for it, you might as well use it. And In this case, you get the rare satisfaction of seeing your tax dollars well spent. The American Memory site features a small portion of the Library of Congress holdings (which means It's still pretty huge): you can browse through such goodies as a collection of antique baseball cards, recently recovered notebooks belonging to Wait Whitman (Including a reproduction of a cardboard butterfly that Wait made and frequently used in publicity photos), a wide variety of daguerreotypes, various WPA photos, nineteenth-century pamphlets, and - literally - much, much more. This is one of those sites where you could spend days browsing, and still not get to the end.

ART CRIMES (http://www.graffiti.org/): When I lived in Chicago, I had this fantasy about all the gang graffiti on the walls In the city suddenly being transformed into reproductions of high-art paintings: Botticellis in place of Insane Popes tags; Nude Descending a Staircase in place of the Latin Kings. . . . Art Crimes doesn't exactly present the realization of my daydream, but it's the next closest thing: a virtual gallery of some of the best graffiti by some of the best graffiti artists around the world. It's also an invaluable source of information about styles, history, and technique in one gorgeous package.

Mark Van de Walle contributes Hot List monthly to Artforum.