Artbabble

A wonderful collection contributed by museums, institutes, collections and galleries across the country, artbabble.com presents contemporary and historical movies of art and artists of all persuasions and many periods. Art, itself, is broadly defined here; the Japanese section includes videos on the tea ceremony and on saki, and the Ancient Art channel features mummification. It's a well designed site, with nicely drawn graphics and quickly loading pages, and the materials are organized into channels and by artist for ease of use.

My only complaint - and given the nature of this site, a very serious one - is that the Flash videos are not downloadable using popular browser downloaders. I haven't explored further than the ones I have for Firefox, but they don't work here. I can understand the motives, but for me, the entire site is a waste of time. I can't stream anything on the connection I have, so I rely on downloading and watching offline. And I can't do that, here, so I might as well go somewhere else. It's a shame and I've knocked a star off for it, since those of us depending on free wi-fi connections ought not to be left out in the cold.