How Buddha’s Hair Inspired Burma’s Most Sacred Site

The Shwedagon Pagoda is the most sacred site in Burma. Its origins can be traced back to the first millennium

Graceland mansion was home to Elvis Presley, and is located on a 13.8-acre estate in Memphis, Tennessee.

See Inside Graceland’s $137-million Expansion

A complex fit for a king

One Writer Used Statistics to Reveal the Secrets of What Makes Great Writing

In his new book, data journalist Ben Blatt takes a by-the-numbers look at literary classics and finds some fascinating patterns

The Beast must learn to love someone else and be loved before the last petal falls on the Enchanted Rose in the tale of the new Disney film, Beauty and the Beast

Ask Smithsonian 2017

The Beast’s Enchanted Rose Lasted a Decade. How Long Can a Real One Last?

A Smithsonian expert says the film’s was undoubtedly a hybrid tea rose

New "Don't mess with Texas" trash cans at the Texas capitol building in Austin.

The Trashy Beginnings of “Don’t Mess With Texas”

A true story of the defining phrase of the Lone Star state

Henry Peter Bosse Construction of Rock and Brush Dam, L.W., 1891 cyanotype

Photographs of America’s Eastern Treasures Finally Have Their Moment in the Limelight

A neglected period of American photographic history goes on display at the National Gallery of Art

The Featured Works display at the American Writers Museum in Chicago.

America’s First Writers Museum Is Slated to Open in May

A new home for celebrating American literary titans, titles and traditions takes root in Chicago

Pedestrians walking by the the Dwarfs of Wroclaw on Świdnicka Street, the main shopping street in the city.

Where to Hunt for the World’s Smallest Monuments

Don’t overlook these tiny statues in cities around the world

Frescoes inside the Brömserhof, the building where Siegfried's Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum is housed.

Europe

This Medieval Knight’s Manor Houses Over 350 Mechanical Musical Instruments

From tiny music boxes to the bus-sized Orchestrion, Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Cabinet in Germany’s Rhineland is the perfect musical detour

Patrick O'Brien, "Dinosaur and Volkswagen," Gigantic, 1998, oil on canvas - How big is “gigantic?” Patrick O'Brien shares his life-long fascination with the illustrations of prehistoric animals in children's books with a new generation of young readers. Other images in Gigantic compare dinosaurs with modern devices such as monster trucks, cherry pickers and tanks. O’Brien lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Art Meets Science

A New Exhibition Explores the Science and Math in Children’s Book Illustrations

The 29 artworks on display capture the wonder in nature, engineering and discoveries

Diller's gag lines were typed and meticulously filed into 48 drawers of a large, beige Steelmaster cabinet on wheels.

How Many Volunteers Does It Take to Transcribe Phyllis Diller’s 53,000 Jokes?

Playing around in this massive joke file is like a crash course in brash humor

The World of Radio (detail) by Arthur Gordon Smith

The Romance and Promise of 20th-Century Radio Is Captured in This Mural

At the Cooper Hewitt, a rare opportunity to view “The World of Radio” with its masterful vignettes celebrating the Modern age

“Music is a way of looking at someone in a different way,” says ethnomusicologist Ben Harbert. “You see them as a singer, not a prisoner.”

Finding Music Behind Prison Bars

At the Louisiana State Penitentiary and at a maximum-security prison in Malawi, the benefits of music are far-reaching

Yayoi Kusama with recent works in Tokyo, 2016

Follow the Polka Dots to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms That Are Breaking Museum Records

“Polka dots are a way to infinity,” says Japan’s most successful artist, now at the Hirshhorn

The beauty of this mutant strain of the fungus Trichoderma reesei belies the organism’s potential for dismantling biomass.

Art Meets Science

Scientists Make Art From Objects Invisible to the Naked Eye

Sophisticated microscopes, satellites and other instruments can create stunning images in experts’ hands

Order an old fashioned at the Frolic Room on Hollywood Boulevard, an old haunt of show business greats like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

Lights, Camera…Cocktails! Five Historic Bars From Hollywood’s Golden Age

Toast the Oscars at one of these Old Holywood watering holes

The Original Dixieland Jass Band included cornetist Nick LaRocca, trombonist Eddie Edwards, clarinetist Larry Shields, pianist Henry Ragas, and drummer Tony Sbarbaro.

The First Jazz Recording Was Made by a Group of White Guys?

A century ago, a recording of the startlingly novel “Livery Stable Blues” helped launch a new genre

Joan Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932)

When Hollywood Glamour Was Sold at the Local Department Store

During the 1930s, the world’s most fashionable looks came not from Paris, but from La-La Land

Most players of “Walden” go straight to survival tasks, admits Fullerton.

Can a Video Game Capture the Magic of Walden?

Henry David Thoreau’s famed retreat gets pixelated

Misty Copeland sees dance as a “language and a culture that people from everywhere, all over the world, can relate to and understand and come together for.”

In the Footsteps of Three Modern American Prima Ballerinas

A new exhibition shows that classical ballet and the role of the ballerina are rapidly changing

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