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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Engraved portrait of Melvil Dewey.

Melvil Dewey’s Name Stripped From Top Library Award

An American Library Association resolution points to Dewey’s history of discriminatory and predatory behavior

Hansel Mieth, photograph from “International Ladies’ Garment Workers: How a Great Union Works Inside and Out"

Women Who Shaped History

‘Life’ Magazine’s Earliest Women Photojournalists Step Into Spotlight

A new exhibition highlights images by Margaret Bourke-White, Marie Hansen, Martha Holmes, Lisa Larsen, Nina Leen and Hansel Mieth

Exterior of the church of Kuñotambo after conservation.

Pioneering Conservation Project Saves Earthquake-Damaged Peruvian Church

The work was part of a larger initiative to retrofit earthen buildings that are vulnerable to seismic activity

Seaweed, it's what's for dinner.

A Remote Scottish Island Needs Help Protecting Its Seaweed-Eating Sheep

North Ronaldsay is looking to hire a warden to rebuild the dike that has long kept its sheep on the coastline

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' "The Grand Odalisque" is one of eight works of art featured in the project

The Louvre Recruited Top Perfumers to Create Scents Inspired by Its Famous Works of Art

The fragrances evoke masterpieces including ‘Venus de Milo,’ ‘The Winged Victory of Samothrace’ and ‘La Grande Odalisque’

A crop of a carte-de-visite of Harriet Tubman seated in an interior room.

An Internal Watchdog Will Investigate the Delay of the Harriet Tubman $20 Bill

The bill’s redesign was supposed to be unveiled in 2020, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the process would be delayed until 2026

Yvonne Morones embraces her dog Scamp the Tramp after he wins the World's Ugliest Dog contest.

Meet Scamp the Tramp, the World’s Ugliest Dog

Scamp took home the top prize in an annual competition that seeks to promote dog adoption

L to R: The statue of St. George prior to 2018 restoration attempt, statue post-restoration, and statue following recent "unrestoration"

Statue of St. George Undergoes ‘Unrestoration’ to Salvage Botched Paint Job

A 2018 restoration attempt left the 16th-century statue looking like a cartoon character

Cool Finds

Volunteers Counted All the Squirrels in Central Park

Three hundred people tallied up the number of bushy-tailed residents over the course of 11 days last October

This geoglyph, previously identified as a hummingbird, actually depicts a hermit, a subgroup of hummingbird known to live in the forested regions of northern and eastern Peru

Scientists Identify Exotic Birds Depicted in Peru’s Mysterious Nazca Lines

The researchers argue that the non-native birds’ presence must be closely related to the etchings’ overall purpose

Rose Cleveland (left) and Evangeline Simpson Whipple (right) exchanged passionate love letters throughout the course of their nearly 30-year relationship

New Book Chronicles First Lady Rose Cleveland’s Love Affair With Evangeline Simpson Whipple

Rose and her longtime partner are buried side by side in the Italian town where they once shared a home

French gallerist Philippe Mendes poses next to Eugene Delacroix's lost preliminary painting of “Women of Algiers in Their Apartment."

Cool Finds

Lost Version of Delacroix Masterpiece Goes on View After Being Found in Paris Apartment

The painting, made in preparation for 1834’s ‘Women of Algiers in Their Apartment,’ went missing in 1850

Inside Poster House

The U.S. Is Now Home to Its First Poster Museum

Poster House, which just launched in New York, seeks to ‘cover posters from all over the world and time periods,’ its director says

John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, the creators of BASIC.

New Hampshire Is First State to Install Highway Marker to Computer Programming

The roadside sign is dedicated to BASIC, a computer programming language developed at Dartmouth College in 1964

Thanks to a $392,000 restoration campaign, tourists can now explore the space, roaming the baths’ still-standing walls and the extensive network of tunnels hidden below

You Can Now Tour the Tunnels Beneath Rome’s Baths of Caracalla

The newly opened underground network features a brick oven once used to heat the baths’ caldarium, as well as a contemporary video art installation

Paisaje Artico de Sommarøy

This Norwegian Island Wants to Become the World’s First Time-Free Zone

‘Our goal is to provide full flexibility, 24/7,’ one resident said. ‘If you want to cut the lawn at 4 a.m., then you do it.’

Trending Today

La Jolla’s ‘Lorax’ Tree Has Fallen

The Monterey cypress believed to have partially inspired Dr. Seuss’s 1971 classic enviromental tale toppled last week for unknown reasons

Archaeologists unearthed the cannonballs while excavating the ruins of Zishtova Fortress in Bulgaria

Cool Finds

Trove of Cannonballs Likely Used by Vlad the Impaler Found in Bulgaria

The primitive projectiles probably date to the Romanian ruler’s 1461 through 1462 siege of Zishtova Fortress

Still from Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass

The Louvre’s First VR Experience Lets Visitors Get Close to the ‘Mona Lisa’

The project will be featured in a major da Vinci exhibition dropping in October

The Rebecca Salome Foster monument pictured before (left) and after (right) restoration

Long-Forgotten Monument to Prison Reformer Will Be Reinstalled in New York Courthouse

Rebecca Salome Foster was known as the “Tombs Angel” in recognition of her work with inmates housed at a Manhattan prison known as “The Tombs”

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