DATE: Monday, July 21, 1997                 TAG: 9707190242

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARK EDELEN, PILOT ONLINE STAFF 

                                            LENGTH:   69 lines

THE MODERN ARTS AREN'T BEING UPSTAGED ON THE WEB

The arts in Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads have a new home - a new home page, more accurately. The Virginia Beach departments of museums and libraries last week unveiled Access the Arts, which has a virtual home on the World Wide Web and will soon have a physical home in the Virginia Beach Central Library.

The virtual part of Access the Arts is a Web site (www.va-beach. com/access-the-arts/), open to anyone with Internet access, that provides profiles, e-mail addresses and performance schedules for area nonprofit arts organizations - museums, theater and dance companies, music groups.

This in essence creates small home pages for groups such as Commonwealth Musical Stage, the ZWG Repertory Theater, the Little Theater of Virginia Beach, the Tidewater Winds, the Virginia Beach Symphony Orchestra and the Hurrah Players. Plus, the site links out to groups with existing home pages.

``I think it will serve as a clearinghouse for arts and cultural events in the area,'' said Lynn Clements, director of programs and operations for the Virginia Marine Science Museum, who is administering the Access the Arts project.

The physical part of the project is a computer kiosk that should be up the first week of August in the Virginia Beach Central Library, at the base of the stairs to the second floor. That computer will let any member of the public view the Access the Arts site free.

Public access to the Internet is a requirement of Open Studio: The Arts Online, the national program that provided a $3,500 grant to help the Virginia Beach program get up and running.

The Access the Arts site is not comprehensive in listing all Hampton Roads arts groups, many of which have launched free-standing Web sites or have home pages under the umbrella of WHRO's Community Link site.

Virginia Opera is included; the Virginia Symphony is not but will be added soon, Clements said. Both groups already have their own official home pages. Virginia Opera's site hasn't been updated for the 1997-98 season, though the symphony's has.

And the symphony's site is impressive, with ticket information, links to other orchestras nationwide, even a discussion forum (though little used). All it needs is some RealAudio music.

The Virginia Stage Company has posted its upcoming season on its Web site, on Community Link. Check descriptions of ``Appalachian Strings,'' ``Angel Street'' and more; read a history of the Wells Theatre, or just get directions to it.

Some of the area's smaller theater companies also already have Web outposts: the Generic Theater in Norfolk profiles its new artistic director; The Actors' Theater in Virginia Beach lets you sign up for e-mail notices of upcoming shows; and the new 2nd Story Theater in Norfolk takes reservations by e-mail and has a call for scripts.

The visual arts in Hampton Roads are well-represented online as well. The Chrysler Museum offers extensive photo tours of its collections, from American paintings to glass, plus details on upcoming shows. The Hampton University Museum's Web site samples its collections of African, African-American and Native American art.

The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia's calendar, on Access the Arts, promises a September show described as ``the marriage of art and technology,'' using gravity, centrifugal force, prisms and lasers.

There's no mention of art and the Internet, but many Hampton Roads arts organizations, and more now with Access the Arts, have already entered that marriage.

ON PILOT ONLINE: Links to Web sites for more Hampton Roads arts organizations are available through Hampton Roads Fun! on Pilot Online. You'll also find comprehensive calendars for the current week and, just added, listings for the month ahead. MEMO: Got a Hampton Roads-related Web site you want to share? E-mail us

at (pilot(AT)pilotonline.com); specify ``online column'' as the subject.

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