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Arts & Culture / Art & Artists

Firemen March 6 1985 by Donald Sultan, 1985

This Artist’s Worldview Drips With Unending Pessimism

“Man is inherently self-destructive, and whatever is built will be destroyed,” says painter Donald Sultan of his “Disaster Paintings”

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Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Buildings (and One Doghouse) Open for Rare Tours in Honor of the Architect’s 150th Birthday

These new or normally unavailable tours and displays pay homage to an architecture legacy

Joseph Goebbels viewing the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition.

Why It’s So Hard to Find the Original Owners of Nazi-Looted Art

International experts recently gathered at Smithsonian to discuss the state of international provenance research

This celestial chart from 1687 is one of many illustrations from books, charts, and maps showing artists’ imaginings of polar bears.

How Polar Bears Became the Dragons of the North

Renaissance maps depicting the “white bears” say more about our own fears and fantasies than about the predators themselves

“I saw these beautiful shapes and forms,” says Soluri, creator of the series “Evidence of Human Spaceflight.”

New Photos Reveal What’s Left Behind When a Rocket Travels to Space

Michael Soluri captures these strangely evocative traces of America’s heroic extraterrestrial journeys

Stephen Talty’s Guide to Culture

The detective novelist offers his picks for movies, tv shows and Twitter accounts to follow

Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge as Bill Murray Reads You Poetry This June

65 East 125th Street, Harlem by Camilo José Vergara, 1977

Watch How One Harlem Storefront Changes Over Nearly Four Decades

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s new exhibition goes “Down These Mean Streets”

Langston Hughes by Edward Henry Weston, 1932

Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned

Fifty years after his death, Hughes’ extraordinary lyricism resonates with power to people

Amanda Lawrence, lead technician, collections program. With a green sea turtle Chelonia mydas

Why These Humans Are Museum Treasures, Too

A portrait photographer captured 24 staffers from the National Museum of Natural History posing with their favorite artifacts from the collections

First day of Memphis integration, TN by Dr. Ernest C. Withers, 1961

For Black Photographers, the Camera Records Stories of Joy and Struggle

The African American History Museum showcases for the first time signature photographs from its new collections

White plastic horse, 3. Plamacina retroversta ic. III. Specimen collected from Cobh shoreline, Cove of Cork, Ireland

Art Meets Science

These Haunting Photographs Call Attention to Plastic Trash Swirling in the Ocean

Award-winning photographer Mandy Barker explores the beauty and tragedy of marine plankton and plastic waste

Fiber artist Lenore Tawney (1907–2007) crafted a postcard collage and sent it to photographer and artist Maryette Charlton, March 18, 1980.

Cats Had Clout Long Before the Internet

For artists, cats prove to be more than elegant studio companions, but inspirations as well, says a new exhibition

The National Portrait Gallery commissioned a poem from the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa for the museum's new exhibition, "The Face of Battle."

A New Poem is Commissioned to Honor the Soldiers Who Fight America’s Wars

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa writes “After the Burn Pits” for the National Portrait Gallery

Submerged Beach, 1400 Fathoms, Else Bostelmann, Bermuda, 1931. Watercolor on paper, 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches.

Art Meets Science

In the Early 20th Century, the Department of Tropical Research Was Full of Glamorous Adventure

A new exhibition features 60 works by artists the New York Zoological Society department hired to help communicate field biology

Stragglers—French Wounded in the Retreat of Chateau-Thierry by Claggett Wilson, ca. 1919

World War I: 100 Years Later

After Nearly a Century in Storage, These World War I Artworks Still Deliver the Vivid Shock of War

Pulled from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Claggett Wilson’s watercolors are in a traveling show

On the Wire, by Harvey Thomas Dunn (oil on canvas, 1918)

When Artists Became Soldiers and Soldiers Became Artists

A rare opportunity to see works by the American Expeditionary Force’s World War I illustration corps, and newly found underground soldier carvings

Muse with Violin Screen (detail), 1930. Rose Iron Works, Inc. (American, Cleveland, est. 1904). Paul Fehér (Hungarian, 1898–1990), designer. Wrought iron, brass; silver and gold plating

The Innovative Spirit fy17

How Jazz, Flappers, European Émigrés, Booze and Cigarettes Transformed Design

A new Cooper-Hewitt exhibition explores the Jazz Age as a catalyst in popular style

“Salt Series” taken during a low-altitude flight in Western Australia.

Australia’s Salt Ponds Look Like Beautiful, Abstract Art From Above

Taking to the sky to show how industry shapes the earth

Peter Voulkos in his Glendale Boulevard Studio in Los Angeles California

The Ceramicist Who Punched His Pots

Influenced by avant-garde poets, writers and Pablo Picasso, Peter Voulkos experimented with the increasingly unconventional

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