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Articles

Recalling vistas created in the 9th to 12th centuries for Japan's aristocracy, islands are connected by a graceful bridge. Landscape architect Hoichi Kurisu's intention was to express "ancient wisdom."

Florida’s Lush Japanese Gardens

A thousand years of Japanese landscape designs unfold at the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach

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Letters

Deciphering the universe is a "Grand Challenge." Shown here is Galaxy M100.

Synergies

Alain Touwaide, a science historian in the botany department at the National Museum of Natural History, has devoted his career to unearthing lost knowledge.

What Secrets Do Ancient Medical Texts Hold?

The Smithsonian’s Alain Touwaide studies ancient books to identify medicines used thousands of years ago

Sculptor Ousmane Sow creates pieces rooted in Africa and Europe.

A Larger-Than-Life Toussaint Louverture

The Haitian revolutionary joins the Smithsonian Museum of African Art’s collection

Frederick Eugene Ives' photochromoscopy plates "are perhaps the first color photographs of San Francisco.

The 1906 San Francisco Quake in Color

Recently discovered photographs depict the aftermath of the devastating California earthquake in a new light

See artist Preston Singletary's Raven Steals the Sun, 2008, at the American Indian's Heye Center in New York City until September 5.

What’s Up

With the rise of information theory, ideas were seen as behaving like organisms, replicating by leaping from brain to brain, interacting to form new ideas and evolving in what the scientist Roger Sperry called "a burstwise advance."

Ask Smithsonian 2017

What Defines a Meme?

Our world is a place where information can behave like human genes and ideas can replicate, mutate and evolve

A parent hopes an authentic Roman banquet will bring the Latin language alive for their son.

Ad Nauseam

Recreating a Roman banquet seemed like a good idea

Pyramid at El Mirador

Extraordinary Discoveries

In archaeology and medicine

In 1966, Henry Carfagna, the Suffolk Downs track photographer, prepared to take his standard picture of the horses driving toward the wire when he saw a man run onto the track.

At Suffolk Downs, an Unintended Spectator

Photographer Henry Carfagna was in the perfect position to catch the moment when a horse race took a bizarre turn

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May 2011 Anniversaries

May 2011 Anniversaries

The peak of La Danta—one of the world's largest pyramids—pokes through the forest canopy. "All this was abandoned nearly 2,000 years ago," says archaeologist Richard Hansen. "It's like finding Pompeii."

El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya

Now overgrown by jungle, the ancient site was once the thriving capital of the Maya civilization

A circa 1925 woodcut by Unpo Takashima depicts Tokyo's Ueno district ablaze. "Each new gust of wind," reported Joseph Dahlmann, a Jesuit priest who witnessed the calamity from a hilltop, "gave new impulse to the fury of the conflagration."

The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923

The powerful quake and ensuing tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized a nation and unleashed historic consequences

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Blog Carnival #31: Ancient Earth, World’s Oldest ToothAche, Pot-Bellied Dinos and More

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Should You Keep an Emergency Food Stash?

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The Gold and Silver Beetles of Costa Rica

Argentinosaurus and Futalognkosaurus, pictured, from prehistoric South America, stretched more than 100 feet long and weighed in excess of 70 tons.

How to Build a Giant Dinosaur

Sauropods were humongous creatures, but how they got so large is a mystery that paleontologists are still trying to unravel

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Weekend Events: Andrew Young, Kabul Museum, Poetry

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What Tales Do Albertosaurus Injuries Tell?

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