Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Articles

Jeweler Harry Winston donated the famous Hope Diamond—the largest-known deep blue diamond in the world—to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958. It arrived in a plain brown package by registered mail, insured for one million dollars. Surrounded by 16 white pear-shaped and cushion-cut diamonds and hanging from a chain with 45 diamonds, the rare gem attracts 6 million visitors a year to the Natural History Museum.

The Hope Diamond

MASS MoCA

A Unique Home for Cutting-edge Art

MASS MoCA, the nation’s newest and largest center for the contemporary arts, has brought a blue-collar New England town back to the future

None

Two for Tea

America’s only commercial tea crop is grown on an island with plants more than a century old

Bonding through Books

A good read gives mothers and daughters much more to talk about than just the plot

None

In Praise of Pianos…

A Noble and Absurd Undertaking

The Federal Writers’ Project gave Depression-era writers a second chance…and America its first comprehensive self-portrait

None

Myles and Me

The author, who according to family legend is a direct descendant of Myles Standish, surveys the checkered career of his pugnacious Pilgrim ancestor

The Hatfield clan in 1897

A Tale of Fatal Feuds and Futile Forensics

A Smithsonian anthropologist digs for victims of a West Virginia mob murder

A Second Wind

An unlikely alliance of Midwesterners says it is time to take another look at generating electricity through wind power

None

Night Belongs to the Kiwi

It may look fuzzy and adorable but this New Zealand bird is one tough customer

None

Hawaii’s Vanished Birds

For the National Zoological Park, an artist depicts the diversity of the islands’ extinct avian species

Chartres Cathedral

Beasts on High

Journal of Arnold Bennett

Bedtime Reading

None

Splendors of Topkapi

None

Day by Day, In Pursuit of Justice

In Washington County, Vermont, prosecutors face mounting caseloads, looming deadlines —and ongoing drama

Page 1284 of 1325