Arts & Culture

On October 21, some 60,000 pilgrims descend on the town of Portobelo, Panama, to celebrate the Festival del Cristo Negro.

Panama

Panama's Black Christ Festival Stirs Up Sorrow and a Sense of Survival

For Afro-Panamanians, October offers a chance to celebrate Catholicism and their Blackness

To grab pedestrians’ attention, Pahl built a 19-foot-tall hammer and erected it on the lawn in front of the museum in 2007.

A Small Town in Alaska Is Home to the World's First Hammer Museum

Perhaps no one knows the history of the tool better than collector Dave Pahl, who opened a shrine of his artifacts in Haines 20 years ago

“The first people to look at the Rosetta Stone thought it would take two weeks to decipher,” says Edward Dolnick, author of The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone. “It ended up taking 20 years.”

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Two Hundred Years Ago, the Rosetta Stone Unlocked the Secrets of Ancient Egypt

French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs on September 27, 1822

Andrew Dominik's Blonde doesn't purport to be historically accurate. Instead, like the Joyce Carol Oates novel it's based on, the film seeks to be spiritually faithful to the image Monroe embodied.

Women Who Shaped History

Who Was the Real Marilyn Monroe?

"Blonde," a heavily fictionalized film by Andrew Dominik, explores the star's life and legend in a narrative that's equal parts glamorous and disturbing

This month, Portraits, a podcast from the National Portrait Gallery, revisits "Finding Cleopatra," a Sidedoor episode with host Lizzie Peabody exploring the life of the artist Edmonia Lewis (above: a photographic portrait by Henry Rocher, c. 1890).

Cleopatra’s Iconoclastic Sculptor Was Her Own Kind of Queen

Smithsonian podcasts delve into the life of Edmonia Lewis, how astronauts sleep, the evolution of the human brain; and drop in on painter Kay WalkingStick

Florence Pugh (left) stars in Don't Worry Darling as Alice, a 1950s housewife who resides in an idyllic California community with her husband, Jack (Harry Styles, right).

The Feminist Inspiration Behind 'Don't Worry Darling'

Director Olivia Wilde dubbed the new film "'The Feminine Mystique' on acid"

Lost by Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, 2015. The acrylic and oil work is from a series on the Mangbetu people of Congo, whose distinctive traditions, such as skull-elongation, are on the brink of disappearing.

How Artist Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga Connects the Past and the Present

In bold, symbolic canvasses, the painter was inspired by a broken iPhone

Members of the Preservation All Stars perform in the hall on August 18, 2022.  

How Preservation Hall Has Kept New Orleans' Iconic Jazz Alive

The plucky institution staged a brassy comeback for America’s signature music

Market research firm Fact.MR estimated that global nonalcoholic wine sales reached $1.6 billion in 2021 and will double in the next decade.

The Science Behind Nonalcoholic Wine

Drinking habits are changing, and vintners are exceeding tasters' expectations with new options stripped of their alcohol

The signpost of hometowns for each of the characters in the sitcom "M*A*S*H" is now held in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where it will go on view December 9.

The Stars Are Aligned at the National Museum of American History

Fifty Years and TV's 'M*A*S*H' Still Draws Audiences

Fans are making plans to visit the Smithsonian this December when the show's signature signpost goes on view in the new exhibition "Entertainment Nation"

Detail of the Chief Johnson totem pole

The World's Largest Collection of Standing Totem Poles Keeps Getting Bigger

Eighty sculptures in and around Ketchikan, Alaska, tell the ancestral stories of Indigenous clans

The Radcliffe Camera, part of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Tolkien once had a vision of this structure as a temple to Morgoth, the villain of Middle-earth.

How J.R.R. Tolkien Came to Write the Stories of 'The Rings of Power'

Haunted by the approach of another world war, the beloved fantasy author created a new story of Middle-earth that few people even knew about—until now

Paula, Sam and Sol Messinger aboard the M.S. St. Louis in May 1939. The U.S. denied the ship entry, forcing its 937 passengers to return to Europe. More than a quarter of these refugees were later killed in the Holocaust.

Untold Stories of American History

Why Was America So Reluctant to Take Action on the Holocaust?

A new Ken Burns documentary examines the U.S.' complex, often shameful response to the rise of Nazism and the plight of Jewish refugees

The Woman King tells the story of the Agojie, an elite, all-woman army in the West African kingdom of Dahomey.

Based on a True Story

The Real Warriors Behind 'The Woman King'

A new film stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, the all-woman army of the African kingdom of Dahomey

The Trans Bhutan Trail, which was originally part of the Silk Road, is a historic pilgrimage route dating back thousands of years.

The 250-Mile Trans Bhutan Trail Will Reopen After 60 Years

After a major restoration project, the path connecting 400 cultural and historic sites is once again passable

Along the Vietnamese coast, temples constructed in reverence to whales and other marine mammals—such as this one in Phan Thiet—house valuable information on the country’s little-studied cetaceans.

Inside Vietnam's Whale Temples

Centuries-old whale worship shrines are shedding light on the diversity and distribution of marine mammals off the country's coast

Catherine de' Medici was the mother of three kings.

Based on a True Story

The Many Myths of Catherine de' Medici

A new Starz series, "The Serpent Queen," dramatizes the life of the much-maligned 16th-century ruler

Dehydrated carrageen looks nothing like the beautiful red fronds easily identified in coastal rocky pools.

A Brief History of Ireland's Carrageen Moss Pudding

The curious dessert—combining a seaweed found on the Emerald Isle's coast with dairy—lies in the hands of regular folks who enjoy a challenge

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty (1970). Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA. Mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, water. 1,500 ft. (457.2 m) long and 15 ft. (4.6 m) wide. Collection Dia Art Foundation. Photograph: William T. Carson, 2020

How Utah's 'Spiral Jetty' Is Drawing Attention to the Climate Crisis

Years of drought have exposed Robert Smithson's massive earthwork in the Great Salt Lake

A worker sorts coffee beans at the Lamastus Family Estate farm in Boquete, a region known the world over for its coffee varieties.

Panama

Experience Panama's Coffee Farming Tradition in the Chiriquí Highlands

A coffee circuit connects 15 farms that offer tours and tastings in what's been called the "Napa Valley of coffee"

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