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Latest Features

This month, Portraits, a podcast from the National Portrait Gallery, revisits "Finding Cleopatra," a Sidedoor episode with host Lizzie Peabody exploring the life of the artist Edmonia Lewis (above: a photographic portrait by Henry Rocher, c. 1890).

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Cleopatra’s Iconoclastic Sculptor Was Her Own Kind of Queen

The Quadcopter Mines Detector uses a metal detector to find land mines as it flies above them.

INNOVATION

A Ukrainian Teenager Invents a Drone That Can Detect Land Mines

Just as songs repeat in choruses, formations in space take understandable shapes. Pictured here are the large Cartwheel galaxy and two smaller companion galaxies.

SCIENCE

What Pop Stars and Actual Stars Have in Common

Neal V. Loving’s WR-3, shown at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, will move to the redesigned galleries on the National Mall.

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

The West Wing of the National Air and Space Museum Prepares to Take Flight

The current drought reveals lost items from earlier, wetter times, like this sunken boat near Iceberg Canyon.

SCIENCE

The Breathtaking Glen Canyon Reveals Its Secrets

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HISTORY

The Little-Known Story of the Women Who Stood Up to General Motors and Demanded Equal Pay

Florence Pugh (left) stars in Don't Worry Darling as Alice, a 1950s housewife who resides in an idyllic California community with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles, right).

HISTORY

The Feminist Inspiration Behind 'Don't Worry Darling'

Lost by Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, 2015. The acrylic and oil work is from a series on the Mangbetu people of Congo, whose distinctive traditions, such as skull-elongation, are on the brink of disappearing.

ARTS & CULTURE

How Artist Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga Connects the Past and the Present

Current Issue

Smithsonian magazine October 2022 issue cover

Most Popular

1.

Travel

The 50 Million-Year-Old Treasures of Fossil Lake

In a forbidding Wyoming desert, scientists and fortune hunters search for the surprisingly intact remains of horses and other creatures that lived long ago

2.

History

The Real History Behind 'The Woman King'

A new film stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, the all-woman army of the African kingdom of Dahomey

3.

Innovation

A Ukrainian Teenager Invents a Drone That Can Detect Land Mines

Seventeen-year-old Igor Klymenko worked on his invention while sheltering in a basement from Russian attacks

4.

Science

The Breathtaking Glen Canyon Reveals Its Secrets

Water woes threaten America’s second largest reservoir—but leave new vistas in their wake

5.

Smart News

California Has Legalized Human Composting

By 2027, Golden State residents will have the choice to turn their bodies into nutrient-rich compost

Smithsonian Voices
National Museum of Natural History

What the Demise of Mammoths Can Teach Us About Future Extinctions

Office of Academic Appointments and Internships

My Life Coach, the Forest

Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery

Comic Series Presents Ten (More) Stories About Visionaries and Rule Breakers

National Museum of American History

How Gus Arriola and Gordo Became Accidental Ambassadors of Mexican Culture

National Museum of the American Latino

¡Presente! Activity Guide

Smithsonian Affiliations

Digital Restoration Gives New Life to America’s Oldest Theater Curtain

See All

Special Report
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Alaska

Alaska is nicknamed "The Great Land," and for good reason: it is wild, rugged and expansive. In a series of articles, Smithsonian magazine explores the history, culture and natural wonders of the 49th state.

View Full Report

Featured Stories

For More Than 60 Years, Indigenous Alaskans Have Hosted Their Own Olympics

This Wonder Bird Flies Thousands of Miles, Non-Stop, as Part of an Epic Migration

The World's Largest Collection of Standing Totem Poles Keeps Getting Bigger

Made Possible Through the Support of Travel Alaska Logo-CMYK_Large_transp.png

Smithsonian Channel

Preview thumbnail for video 'Journey to the Dark Side of the Moon

Journey to the Dark Side of the Moon

Play
Preview thumbnail for video 'You’re Not Ready for How Playful Komodo Dragons Can Be

You’re Not Ready for How Playful Komodo Dragons Can Be

Preview thumbnail for video 'An Energetic Dog Is Best Friends With an Orphan Raccoon

An Energetic Dog Is Best Friends With an Orphan Raccoon

Photo of the day

A Rainbow Bee-eater prepares to feast on a dragonfly after repeatedly slamming the insect against its perch to stun and subdue it. This photograph captures the unfortunate dragonfly's final moments, just before it is swallowed whole, wings and all. An Unfortunate Dragonfly Is Caught by a Rainbow Bee-Eater

History

Florence Pugh (left) stars in Don't Worry Darling as Alice, a 1950s housewife who resides in an idyllic California community with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles, right).

The Feminist Inspiration Behind 'Don't Worry Darling'

Director Olivia Wilde dubbed the new film "'The Feminine Mystique' on acid"

Bakhtiari nomads in the Zagros Mountains of Iran in June 2017

How Nomads Shaped Centuries of Civilization

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The Little-Known Story of the Women Who Stood Up to General Motors and Demanded Equal Pay

Science

An experimental vineyard at Cornell AgriTech’s McCarthy Farm in Geneva, New York, where researchers are studying hybrid grapes

Are Hybrid Grapes the Future of Wine?

Scientists, growers and winemakers are working with experimental varieties to adapt to the effects of climate change

A bull walks in front of a cow. If they mate, the bull’s sperm will likely cluster together as they swim through the female’s reproductive organs.

Bull Sperm Get by With a Little Help From Their Friends

Human composting transforms corpses into nutrient-rich soil.

California Has Legalized Human Composting

Innovation

Market research firm Fact.MR estimated that global nonalcoholic wine sales reached $1.6 billion in 2021 and will double in the next decade.

The Science Behind Nonalcoholic Wine

Drinking habits are changing, and vintners are exceeding tasters' expectations with new options stripped of their alcohol

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The Remarkable Effort to Locate America's Lost Patents

Manual breast pump with black bulb, dating to sometime between 1920 and 1959

The Sucky History of the Breast Pump

Arts & Culture

Tourists visit the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul in 2020.

Archaeologists Call on Unesco to Protect the Hagia Sophia

The sixth-century site has suffered increased vandalism and damage in recent years

Few arguments showcase the fraught politics of state foods than the debate over red and green chiles in New Mexico.

The Contentious History of Official State Foods

Designer Samantha Black created three special-edition outfits for Claudie.

New American Girl Doll Celebrates Black Joy During the Harlem Renaissance

Travel

Detail of the Chief Johnson totem pole

The World's Largest Collection of Standing Totem Poles Keeps Getting Bigger

Eighty sculptures in and around Ketchikan, Alaska, tell the ancestral stories of Indigenous clans

About two to three million birds of prey fly through Panama each fall, in what amounts to the world’s third-largest raptor migration.

Watch Millions of Raptors Fly Across Panama This Fall

The Eiffel Tower at night

To Save Energy, the Eiffel Tower Dims Its Lights Early

At the Smithsonian

Neal V. Loving’s WR-3, shown at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, will move to the redesigned galleries on the National Mall.

The West Wing of the National Air and Space Museum Prepares to Take Flight

The Smithsonian museum reopens to the public, transforming the way we tell the story of aviation

Florence Pugh (left) stars in Don't Worry Darling as Alice, a 1950s housewife who resides in an idyllic California community with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles, right).

The Feminist Inspiration Behind 'Don't Worry Darling'

The Bell X-1, a miracle of form and function.

How the Bell X-1 Ushered in the Supersonic Age