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Arts & Culture / Art & Artists

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Martín Ramírez (1895-1963): Who’s He?

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What’s Up

A list of events and exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution

Sculptors and artists designed lifelike masks for gravely wounded soldiers.

World War I: 100 Years Later

Faces of War

Amid the horrors of World War I, a corps of artists brought hope to soldiers disfigured in the trenches

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Out of Africa

This month a special collection €“representing most of Africa’s major artistic traditions €“goes spectacularly on view

Longfellow is only the second writer to grace a U.S. stamp more than once.

Famous Once Again

Longfellow reaches his bicentennial; here’s why his poems became perennial

Rossetti identified the subject of his Lady Lilith painting as Adam's first wife—"the witch he loved before the gift of Eve." The work (1866-68) was altered in 1872-73 to please patron Frederick Leyland. The original model was Rossetti's lover Fanny Cornforth.

Incurably Romantic

For much of the 20th century, Britain’s Pre-Raphaelite were dismissed as overly sentimental. A new exhibition shows why they’re back in favor

Cornell's 1946 construction, an homage to the ballerina Tamara Toumanova, incorporated feathers from her costumes.

Pas de Deux

Joseph Cornell turned his obsession with a prima ballerina into art

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The Art of the Audition

"It is a very simple truth," novelist Henry James wrote in 1887, "that when today we look for 'American art' we find it mainly in Paris." John Singer Sargent captured the pearly light of dusk in Paris in his 1879 work In the Luxembourg Gardens.

Americans in Paris

In the late 19th century, the City of Light beckoned Whistler, Sargent, Cassatt and other young artists. What they experienced would transform American art

The Bar-B-Q Inn in 1971.

Time After Time

William Christenberry embraces the impermanent

Pretty? Yes. But it isn't Bulbophyllum echinolabium's bright colors that attract pollinating flies—it's the putrid stench. Sniff out a few hundred live orchids at the Museum of Natural History starting January 27.

What’s Up

Live Orchids, Japanese art and African masks

One of the 10,000 mugs collected by Mark Michaelson is that of a thief, described in a 1950s police record as a "psycho" who'd escaped a correctional facility, "but they don't want him."

Arresting Faces

A new book argues the case for the mugshot as art

An Interview with Stephanie Dickey, author of “Rembrandt at 400”

Stephanie Dickey discusses Rembrandt’s ambition and what it was like to see the paintings in person

"In his writing," Theroux says, E.B. White (shown on his Maine farm circa 1970) "is the kindest and most rational observer of the world."

Living With Geese

Novelist and gozzard Paul Theroux ruminates about avian misconceptions, anthropomorphism and March of the Penguins as “a travesty of science”

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Man of the Century

But 100 years after writing his classic memoir, the question about Henry Adams remains: Which century?

An Almost Mystical Feeling

Master painter Rembrandt was also a talented draftsman and printmaker

Stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, "Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galille" has not been recovered. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Rembrandt at 400

Astonishing brushwork, wrinkles-and-all honesty, deep compassion. What’s the secret of his enduring genius?

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What’s Up

Topper, 1st Class and No Popcorn

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Ways of Seeing

Inviting artists to help showcase its collections is just one way the Hirshhorn Museum is expanding its vision

For his new book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, economist David Galenson conducted a study of artistic greatness.

Interview: David Galenson

Pondering the nature of artistic genius, a social scientist finds that creativity has a bottom line

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