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Arts & Culture

OK Go for launch: Andy Ross, Tim Nordwind, Damian Kulash Jr. and Dan Konopka

American Ingenuity Awards

How OK Go Has Revolutionized the Music Video

To pull off one of their most daring videos, they needed a borrowed Russian transport jet, spreadsheets and calculus, and a lot of motion-sickness medicine

The EcoHelmet is a foldable, recyclable helmet constructed of paper with a water-resistant coating.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

This Folded Paper Fans Out Into a Full-Size Bike Helmet

The EcoHelmet, this year’s James Dyson Award winner, could be used by bike shares across the world

Author Steven Johnson looks at many of history's "artifacts of the future" that hinted at huge technological, scientific and cultural breakthroughs to come in his new book, Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

If Necessity Is the Mother of Invention, Then Play Is Its Father

In a new book, Steven Johnson argues that many inventions, considered mindless amusements in their time, wind up leading to serious innovations later

A forest grows in miniature at Metrotech Commons in Brooklyn for Spencer Finch’s “Lost Man Creek."

Art Meets Science

A Miniature Living Redwood Forest Springs Up In Brooklyn

Artist Spencer Finch explores landscape by building a tiny, scale replica of a California grove

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

A Photojournalist Captures Dramatic Portraits of Dancers in the Streets of Cuba

For Gabriel Davalos, photography is about storytelling

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

Lime Marinade, Cohiba Cigar Cases and Other Unique Gifts You Can Buy in Cuba

Korda captured this iconic image of the Cuban revolutionary by chance.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

The Story Behind Che’s Iconic Photo

Fashion photographer Alberto Korda took Che Guevara’s pictures hundreds of times in the 1960s. One stuck

Ian Marcos Gutiérrez, a 23-year-old printer at the Taller Experimental de Gráfica, in Havana, helps the author prepare a block of lithographic limestone for printing.

Step Inside Cuba’s Oldest Printmaking Studio

At the Taller Experimental de Gráfica in Havana, process is everything

Three Taíno Indian sisters pose during a family pig roast in eastern Cuba, where there’s a small but growing movement to explore the indigenous culture that Columbus encountered in 1492.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

Searching for Cuba’s Pre-Columbian Roots

A newfound quest for identity has led some Cubans to reclaim their Taíno Indian heritage

The Story of How McDonald’s First Got Its Start

From the orange groves of California, two brothers sought a fortune selling burgers

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

A Brief History of the Rumba

Born out of slavery in 19th-century Cuba, the lively music and dance form takes many shapes

The Ilban people of East Borneo captured these six warrior skulls in a single battle. They tossed the heads into a fire pit to cure and then wrapped them in vines to suspend their prize from the rafters of the community longhouse.

Explore Haunting Relics of Death With New Photography Book

Placenta-wiping fetuses are only the tip of the frightberg

With some seed money from her grandparents, Alina Morse started her very own business.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

Meet the 11-Year-Old Who Invented a Healthy Lollipop

Made with plant-derived sugar alternatives, Alina Morse’s Zollipops help reduce the risk of cavities

Freeman Fisher Gosden and Charles Correll, c. 1935 (detail), as "Amos and Andy"

Commentary

The Long, Unfortunate History of Racial Parody in America

Art historian Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw discusses the painful performative origins

Armenia

In One of the World’s Oldest Winemaking Regions, a New Generation Revives an Ancient Tradition

An Armenian wine expert highlights the best places to experience the rebirth of a wine culture stifled under Soviet rule

Listening to Norman Lear tell his stories is to hear the last 100 years.

Norman Lear Talks Art, Activism and the 2016 Election

For the famed showrunner, TV has always been a chance to make the political personal

Tourists and Cubans gamble at the casino in the Hotel Nacional in Havana, 1957. Meyer Lansky, who led the U.S. mob’s exploitation of Cuba in the 1950s, set up a famous meeting of crime bosses at the hotel in 1946.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: Cuba

When the Mob Owned Cuba

Best-selling author T.J. English discusses the Mob’s profound influence on Cuban culture and politics in the 1950s

Founder of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale stands next to a wall graphic of the Party's Ten-Point Program inside the Oakland Museum of California's exhibition, "All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50."

The Black Panthers Were Founded 50 Years Ago, and Their Influence Hasn’t Waned

Group founder Bobby Seale reflects on the Panthers’ iconic Ten-Point Program

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