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Arts & Culture / Art & Artists

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The Great(est) Gatsby Playlist

Baz Luhrmann may have his take, but Smithsonian Folkways offers its own streaming soundtrack for the novel-turned-movie

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The Best of Design, Cooper-Hewitt Announces 2013 Award Winners

From a Las Vegas Denny’s with a wedding chapel to rock ‘n’ roll posters, this year’s design award winners have a good time with great design

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg and her DNA-derived self-portrait.

Cracking the Code of the Human Genome

Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived From the DNA in Hair and Gum Found in Public Places

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg reconstructs the faces of strangers from genetic evidence she scavenges from the streets

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Want to See How an Artist Creates a Painting? There’s an App for That

The Repentir app reveals an artist’s creative process by allowing users to peel back layers of paint with the touch of their fingertips

Acoustic paintings from the installation "Higher Resonance."

How Do You Make a Painting Out of Sounds?

Jennie C. Jones has the answer. Her first solo museum show opens at the Hirshhorn in May

The Hirshhorn’s Bubble, which would be erected for two months each fall, would require about 60,000 square feet of membrane material.

The Real Deal With the Hirshhorn Bubble

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum looks to expand in a bold new way

Before There Was Photoshop, These Photographers Knew How to Manipulate an Image

Jerry Uelsmann and other artists manually blended negatives to produce dreamlike sequences

The tin tube was more resilient than its predecessor (the pig bladder), enabling painters to leave their studios.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Paint Tube

Without this simple invention, impressionists such as Claude Monet wouldn’t have been able to create their works of genius

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Egypt’s Murals Are More Than Just Art, They Are a Form of Revolution

Cairo’s artists have turned their city’s walls into a vast social network

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Behind the Scenes in the Smithsonian Regents’ Room

Explore a room in the Smithsonian Castle with a curious history that includes fire and destruction, séances for skeptics and even a skeleton in the closet

Leah Evans titled this work “Soil Survey”

At the Smithsonian Craftshow: Textile Topographies

Leah Evans, whose work is for sale at the annual Smithsonian Craftshow, creates wall hangings from abstracted geogrpahies

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The Strange Beauty of David Maisel’s Aerial Photographs

A new book shows how the photographer creates startling images of open-pit mines, evaporation ponds and other sites of environmental degradation

Jennifer McCurdy mixes fine porcelain with gilding to create pieces full of movement and light.

24 Craft Creations That’ll Inspire You To Think Outside the Box

From fiber to glass, metal to ceramics, selections from this year’s Craft Show will inspire you

A difference of nearly four decades: at top, a ski area in Aspen, Colorado last year, captured by Ron Hoffman; at bottom, the same location in 1974, shot by Dustin Wesley.

Before and After: America’s Environmental History

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VIDEO: Earth Art on the Mall

Four artists left their mark for the Smithsonian’s first ever land art installation as part of a new exhibit about African artists and the earth

ZnO Fall Flowers. Image by Audrey Forticaux, a graduate student in the Chemistry Department

Intriguing Science Art From the University of Wisconsin

From a fish’s dyed nerves to vapor strewn across the planet, images submitted to a contest at the university offer new perspectives of the natural world

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What Modern Art Looks Like As Yummy Dessert

Pastry chef Caitlin Freeman uses inspiration from modern art to whip up cakes, cookies and other desserts

An artist’s rendering of Fog Bridge at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

An Artist Creates Artificial Fog in San Francisco

Fujiko Nakaya works with an unusual medium. The Japanese artist is sculpting fog clouds at the Exploratorium’s new site at Pier 15

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Q+A with Chadwick Boseman, Star of New Jackie Robinson Biopic, ’42′

The actor talks about getting vetted by the baseball legend’s grandchildren, meeting with his wife and why baseball was actually his worst sport

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The Incredible True Story of Master Craftsman, Freedman Thomas Day

He rose to an elite status and created his own style along the way

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