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Arts & Culture / Art & Artists

The Creature Shop is located in Queens, inside the former Standard Motors building, a two-block-long behemoth with high ceilings and freight elevators capable of accommodating even the biggest birds. 

A Peek Inside Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Where ‘Sesame Street’ Characters and Other Whimsical Puppets Are Designed

Every weekend, the magical workshop opens its doors for the public to see how legendary film and television characters are made

With a full-size basketball court, and conspicuously without any presidential paper documents, the center, in many ways, is a departure from presidential institutions that came before.

Here’s How the Obama Presidential Center Is Different From Other Presidents’ Museums

More than a library and archives, the new Chicago institution is a place for the community to gather, talk and play together

The indomitable Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story (1995). The film made history as the first feature-length, 3D-rendered film produced entirely with computer animation.

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

Five Advances That Helped Turn a Night Out at the Movies Into the All-Enveloping Experience It Has Become

The power of film is often in its ability to feel larger than life. Movie makers have been developing ways to accentuate that aspect for more than a century

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America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

The Astounding True Story of America’s Comic Book Creators, From ‘The Yellow Kid’ to Superman to Webcomics

A groundbreaking cartoonist paired images with a running narrative in 1896 to create the first comic strip. They’ve mutated into books, blockbuster movies and Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novels

Iconic soap characters: Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane of All My Children; Eric Braeden’s Victor Newman of The Young and the Restless; and Tamara  Tunie’s Jessica Griffin Harris of As the World Turns. Tunie now stars in CBS’ Beyond the Gates. 

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

The Queen of Soap Operas Started Off By Telling Stories About the Drama She Was Missing in Her Own Life

Irna Phillips was a radio voice actor in Chicago when she was asked to create a serialized program. From that, she created a legacy that includes ‘Guiding Light’ and ‘As the World Turns’

Clive Campbell in 1980. “Hip-hop is both an American immigrant story and a global story,” he later said. “It belongs to everybody.”

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

They Were Just Having a Back-to-School Party in an Apartment Rec Room. Little Did They Know They Were Creating Hip-Hop

The music genre that became a global sensation started with some creative teens just getting together and riffing rhymes to DJ Kool Herc’s curated beats

Lomax hit the road in search of as many folk traditions as he could discover. “Folk music,” he wrote, “blooms hard by the crossroads.”

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

Alan Lomax Spent Years Traveling the Country to Record the Sounds of America. The Legacy of His Obsession Will Live Forever

By letting Muddy Waters hear himself for the first time, he unlocked a new confidence that set the sharecropper on the path to superstardom. And that’s just the start of what he found in churches, prisons and even lumberjack camps

Two young boys at a Georgia cotton mill. Their slim arms and tiny hands were considered ideal for machine work.

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

When a Photographer Turned His Focus on Social Injustice, It Helped Usher in the First Child Labor Laws

Lewis Hine didn’t consider his job as taking pictures; it was “detective work.” Sometimes gaining access with ruse and subterfuge, he captured stark images that touched hearts and changed minds

Robinson Theater, Richmond, Virginia, 2013. Opened 1937, architect Edward Francis Sinnott Sr., original seating capacity 597.

In a Plea to Preserve Them, One Photographer Has Captured 1,200 American Movie Theaters and Counting

For more than 40 years, Benita VanWinkle has photographed vintage movie houses in all 50 states

O’Keeffe’s New Mexico studio Ghost Ranch. Opposite, a 1918 photo portrait by future husband Alfred Stieglitz.

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

Georgia O’Keeffe Ignored Advice to Mimic Great European Masters. Her Goal Instead Was to Be a Great American Painter

The genius of her work was in painting things as she saw them through her own eyes. So when she surrounded herself with beauty, her work reflected it

Sue Schubel hand-paints around 500 a year from her workshop in a converted barn steps from the ocean in Bremen, Maine, a tiny town in the lower third of the state’s craggy coast.

How ‘Seabird Sue’ Blends Art and Science to Attract Birds Back to Lost Habitat

For the past decade, Sue Schubel has been making detailed decoys of terns, puffins and other seabirds to entice real ones to restored or new homes

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‘The Queen of the Ghetto’ Gave New York’s Immigrant Community a Voice. A Century Later, It’s Re-emerging

Anzia Yezierska wrote from experience then worked hard to make sure her work found an audience. Then a new audience found her

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See the Spectacular Winners of Smithsonian Magazine’s 23rd Annual Photography Contest

This year’s best photos command attention by capturing intimate moments and bold colors

Rotorelief no. 1. This 1935 lithograph, printed on a 7 7⁄8-inch cardboard disc, could spin on a record player to create a hypnotic illusion of three dimensions. 

MoMA Plans a Retrospective for Marcel Duchamp, the Dada Artist Who Was Unimpressed With His Own Masterpieces

The French-American avant garde artist said painting and sculpture exhibitions made him sick. But the collection of 200 of his works may tell the story of art in the 20th century

Original hand-carved hubs for the Purple Heart and Silver Star rest in the jeweler’s toolbox of legendary Providence-based hub carver Elio “Duke” Lossini.

This Massive Collection of More Than a Million Tools Tells the Striking History of Jewelry Making in America

Before computers and A.I., beautiful trinkets were formed with a combination of hubs, dies, finesse and force. Kevin Potter has perhaps the world’s largest assemblage of them

In this “Doonesbury” strip from January 17, 2004, Trudeau makes gentle fun of his own legendary political obsessions.

With ‘Doonesbury,’ Garry Trudeau Found a Way to Inform and Entertain a Generation of Newspaper Readers, One Panel at a Time

A new biography chronicles the history and evolution of the reserved artist who has always let his pen do the talking

Letter from Karl, Gertrude Abercrombie, 1940. Oil on canvas. 24 x 30 in.

Meet the ‘Bop Artist’ Who Was Inspired by Dreams and Hosted Some Surreal Salons in Her Chicago Brownstone

Dizzy Gillespie said his friend Gertrude Abercrombie was able to translate the spirit of jazz music onto a canvas

Xin Ying, principal dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company, wears a costume from the 1948 ballet Diversion of Angels. Graham designed the dress, inspired by a splash of color in a Wassily Kandinsky painting.

Martha Graham Took Classic Ballet and Turned It Into Modern Dance. It’s Still Moving Us 100 Years Later

Her choreography told stories in new ways and her collaborations with costume and stage designers changed the aesthetic of the art. Now, her dance company marks its first century

Wu’s innovation won the top prize of $25,000 at the 2025 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.

This 14-Year-Old Is Using Origami to Imagine Emergency Shelters That Are Sturdy, Cost-Efficient and Easy to Deploy

Miles Wu folded a variant of the Miura-ori pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight

The Château de Montal's early Renaissance style marked a transition from the medieval fortresses that dot a landscape so keenly fought over by the English and French during the Hundred Years’ War.

How a Little-Known French Region Safeguarded the Louvre’s Treasures During World War II

More than 3,000 artworks from national museums were stowed in chateaus in the Lot—about 350 miles south of Paris

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