Smart News Arts & Culture

Ponden Hall near Haworth, West Yorkshire, England.

The House That May Have Inspired ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Up for Sale

A chamber in Ponden Hall bears similarity to the room where the narrator Lockwood passes a fitful night of sleep—and dreams of an ‘ice-cold’ ghost

Cool Finds

Could This Work Be Leonardo da Vinci's Only Known Sculpture?

An art scholar argues "Virgin with the Laughing Child" held in a U.K. museum bears the hallmark smile and other techniques of the polymath's other works

Expansion packs featuring birds of every continent are currently in the works

This New Scientifically Accurate Board Game Is for the Birders

"Wingspan" features 170 unique species cards filled with real-world information, life-like illustrations

Georges Seurat's Pointillist "Study for 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'" exhibits high levels of entropy but low levels of complexity

Art Meets Science

Physicists Come Up With Intriguing Way to Measure Art's Evolution

By mapping the complexity and entropy of 140,000 paintings created between 1031 and 2016, the researchers demonstrated the interaction of art movements

Underdrawing as seen under X-ray (left) and underdrawing superimposed with elements of 1619 portrait (right)

Cool Finds

X-Ray Analysis Reveals Self-Portrait Hidden Under Artemisia Gentileschi Painting

The underpainting closely mirrors an earlier self-portrait depicting the Baroque artist as Saint Catherine

Billie Holiday, performs on stage, 14 February 1954.

Four New Monuments to Historic Women Coming to N.Y.C.

The statues will honor Billie Holiday, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, Helen Rodríguez Trías and Katherine Walker

Mr. Greedy received a "readability" score of 4.4, while Of Mice and Men received a rating of 4.6

Study Suggests ‘Mr. Greedy’ Children’s Book Is Almost as Hard to Read as Steinbeck Classics

The analysis judged texts’ complexity based on sentence length, average word length, vocabulary level, but did not look at reading comprehension

"Monna Vanna," ca 1515. Found in the collection of the Condé Museum, Chantilly.

Cool Finds

Experts Think This 'Nude Mona Lisa' Could Have Been Drawn by Leonardo da Vinci

Previously attributed to his students, close examination of the charcoal drawing shows a left-handed artist created most of the artwork

Illustrated Police News periodical detailing the murders

New Book Chronicles the Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Victims

Contrary to popular belief, the five women were not all prostitutes, but rather individuals down on their luck

The rate was double what the team was expecting.

Nearly Half of Americans Have a Close Family Member Who Has Been Incarcerated

A new study highlights the sheer scope of mass incarceration in the United States

Dr. Seuss drawing at his desk

New Dr. Seuss Book, Which Teaches Kids to Love Art, Will Be Published This Fall

‘Dr. Seuss’s Horse Museum' features an ‘affable horse’ who guides students through a museum of horse-themed artwork

The Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain is one of many museums featuring curvilinear edges

Art Meets Science

New Study Offers Clues to Dominance of Curve-Filled Museum Designs

Architects are more likely than non-experts to deem curvilinear spaces beautiful, but less likely to enter curved over straight-edged rooms

The cactus spines, bound together with yucca leaves, are still stained with black ink

Cool Finds

These 2,000-Year-Old Needles, Still Sharp, Are the Oldest Tattooing Instruments Found in the Southwestern U.S.

Originally excavated in 1972, the pronged cactus-spine tool languished in storage for more than 40 years before its true purpose was recognized

Artifacts on display at Don Miller's farm in 2014. For more than seven decades, Miller unearthed cultural artifacts from North America, South America, Asia, the Caribbean, and in Indo-Pacific regions such as Papua New Guinea.

The F.B.I. Is Trying to Return Thousands of Stolen Artifacts, Including Native American Burial Remains

Five years after the F.B.I.'s six-day raid on a rural Indiana home, the agency is turning to the public for help identifying and repatriating the artifacts

"The Young Lincoln" James Lee Hansen

‘Hot Lincoln’ Stands in Long Line of Attractive Presidential Sculpture

Before hot Lincoln, there was ripped Washington, nude Napoleon and muscular ancient Greek sculptures

This could be your future.

You Can Now Apply to Be a Cadbury Chocolate Taster

A “passion for confectionary” is required

American South

Houston's Rothko Chapel Casts a New Light

When the meditative space reopens, a new skylight will filter the right amount of light on the 14 canvasses installed in the artist's octagonal masterpiece

The drawings and inscriptions date to 207 A.D.

Graffiti Left by Soldiers Repairing Hadrian’s Wall Will Be Immortalized in 3-D

Historic London calls the etchings "some of the most important" along the empire’s sprawling 73-mile northern border

The volume of poetry is set to be sold alongside a trove of photographs passed down by the Barrow family.

Notebook of Poetry Penned by Bonnie and Clyde Set to Go on Auction

The volume features poems written by the outlaw duo during their Depression-era crime spree

Vincent van Gogh, "Tree Roots," 1890

Van Gogh Museum Suggests Artist’s Last Painting Has Long Been Misidentified

Experts argue that the abstract "Tree Roots" is a more likely candidate than the oft-cited "Wheatfield With Crows"

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