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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Notre-Dame's Grand Organ, as seen before the April 2019 fire

Inside the Monumental Effort to Restore Notre-Dame’s Grand Organ

Workers spent four months painstakingly dismantling the musical instrument, which is only set to sound again in 2024

Submissions will be included in an online exhibition, “Reclamation: Recipes, Remedies, and Ritual,” set to open in January 2021.

Your Cherished Family Recipes Could Be Featured in a Museum Exhibition

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is asking the public to share recipes that document unique family histories

Experts have identified the painting as the earliest known version of Jacob Jordaens' The Holy Family (1617–18).

Cool Finds

A 400-Year-Old Flemish Masterpiece Spent Decades Hiding in Plain Sight

Officials previously thought that the Jacob Jordaens painting, which hung in a Brussels town hall for 60 years, was a copy

Rosa Bonheur, Ploughing in the Nivernais, 1849

Rosa Bonheur’s Hyper-Realistic Animal Scenes Transfixed 19th-Century Europe

The Musée d’Orsay recently announced plans to dedicate a fall 2022 exhibition to the trailblazing French artist

The Temperance Society objected to the card's inclusion of a child sipping wine.

The First Commercially Printed Christmas Card Scandalized Victorian England

Two rare copies of the 1843 greeting card, which depicts a child sipping from a glass of wine, are now up for auction

Installation view of Tate Britain's Lynette Yiadom-Boakye retrospective

Stunning Paintings of Fictitious Black Figures Subvert Traditional Portraiture

Riffing on the genre’s long history, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s innovative works raise questions about black identity and representation

Russian physicist and engineer Lev Sergeyevich Termen—who later came to be widely known as Léon Theremin—invented his namesake instrument around 1920. Here, he's pictured in 1928.

Art Meets Science

The Soviet Spy Who Invented the First Major Electronic Instrument

Created by a Russian engineer, the theremin has delighted and confounded audiences since 1920

The winner (and one guest) will be invited to attend the Mona Lisa's annual inspection—one of the few times the work emerges from behind bullet-proof glass.

How You Could Be One of the Only People in the Room With the ‘Mona Lisa’

A Christie’s auction benefitting the Louvre offers a winning bidder the chance to attend the painting’s annual inspection

The Chicken Soup Manifesto features delightful dishes from Ethiopia, Vietnam, Greece and other countries across the globe.

A Journey Around the World, as Told Through Chicken Soup

In her latest book, Portland-based chef Jenn Louis catalogs more than 100 recipes from 64 countries

Ancient artists created the works between 12,600 and 11,800 years ago.

Cool Finds

Tens of Thousands of 12,000-Year-Old Rock Paintings Found in Colombia

The images—heralded by researchers as “the Sistine Chapel of the ancients”—depict animals, humans and geometric patterns

Kazumasa Ogawa, Chrysanthemum from Some Japanese Flowers. ca. 1894

Art Meets Science

How Has Photography’s Relationship With Nature Evolved Over the Past 200 Years?

A new exhibition at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery features more than 100 works documenting the natural world

Researchers analyze the microbiome of Leonardo's Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk (circa 1490). Housed at the Royal Library of Turin, the detailed sketch is considered by some scholars to be a self-portrait.

Art Meets Science

Hidden Microbes and Fungi Found on the Surface of Leonardo da Vinci Drawings

Researchers used new DNA sequencing technology to examine the “bio-archives” of seven of the Renaissance master’s sketches

The cold and isolation of the Svalbard archipelago helps preserve the Arctic World Archive's contents.

Norway Preserves ‘The Scream’ for Future Generations by Burying Digital Copy in Arctic Coal Mine

The Munch masterpiece joins digitized art and artifacts from more than 15 countries in the “futureproof” Arctic World Archive

A helicopter crew discovered this odd monolith in the middle of the Utah desert on November 18.

Cool Finds

A Mysterious Monolith in the Utah Desert Vanished Overnight

Theories regarding the 12-foot-tall metal structure’s origins—and ultimate fate—abound

The Deserted Cottage (circa 1797) is the original drawing for Constable's only surviving etching from the period.

Cool Finds

Early John Constable Sketches Spent 200 Years Forgotten in a Family Scrapbook

The four watercolor drawings and pencil portraits will be featured in an upcoming Sotheby’s sale

Local officials approved plans to install the statue on St. Peter's Hill in Grantham.

Why a Planned Statue of Britain’s ‘Iron Lady,’ Margaret Thatcher, Is So Polarizing

Set to be installed in the prime minister’s hometown of Grantham next year, the ten-foot-tall work has both supporters and detractors

Student researchers analyzed this leaf from a Book of Hours (left), a devotional Christian manuscript that dates to the 15th century. The students found traces of French cursive writing beneath the visible text (right). The cursive was likely scraped away to make the parchment reusable for the illuminated Gothic script.

Cool Finds

College Sophomores Discover Hidden Text in Medieval Manuscript

Students at Rochester Institute of Technology used a self-developed UV imaging system to assess a 15th-century religious document

Local residents walk through the damaged Ghazanchetsots Cathedral, or Holy Savior Cathedral, in Shushi. Azerbaijani forces targeted the cathedra during a six-week offensive designed to regain control of the region.

Why Scholars, Cultural Institutions Are Calling to Protect Armenian Heritage

After six weeks of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia agreed to cede control of territories in the contested region to Azerbaijan

McCubbin's Found spent 115 years hidden beneath the surface of The Pioneer, a 1904 painting widely heralded as one of Australia's greatest masterpieces.

Cool Finds

Missing Australian Masterpiece Spent 115 Years Hiding in Plain Sight

Impressionist Frederick McCubbin painted “The Pioneer” (1904) over an earlier work titled “Found”

An Italian art historian posits that the red chalk drawing of Jesus is a study for Leonardo's Salvator Mundi.

Art Historian Claims a Newly Discovered Drawing Is the Work of Leonardo da Vinci

Much like “Salvator Mundi,” the proposed da Vinci sketch is likely to attract intense scrutiny

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