Smart News: Arts and Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

Visitors interacting with the art at Tania Bruguera's new show

This Art Exhibition Is Guaranteed to Make You Weep

Tania Bruguera’s new show at London’s Tate Modern includes a room spritzed with an organic compound to stimulate “forced empathy”

October 3, 2018

Westminster Abbey’s Newest Window Was Designed by David Hockney—on an iPad

It was commissioned in celebration of Elizabeth II’s reign

October 1, 2018

The space, originally designed by priest and mathematician Guarino Guarini, includes a spectacular and intricate wood and marble dome

October 1, 2018

Altar Frontal (1741), Isfahan. Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Armenia

The Met’s Latest Show Traces Armenia’s Cultural Evolution

Armenia! features more than 140 artifacts, including gilded reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, textiles

September 28, 2018

Did Murder Help Catalyze Thomas Gainsborough’s Early Career?

New documentary evidence suggests the famed artist’s uncle and cousin were victims of targeted killings

September 27, 2018

NYC Pop-Up Exhibition Traces Broken Windows Policing’s Toll

The show explores how the policing of minor crimes has caused an uptick in racial profiling, particularly targeting African American and Latino communities

September 26, 2018

Cool Finds

Historian Identifies Subject of Van Gogh’s “Gardener”

The portrait is likely of a day laborer that worked on the grounds of the asylum where the troubled artist stayed near the end of his life

September 26, 2018

Millennial mainstays like “twerk,” “emoji” and “listicle" have been included in the official Scrabble dictionary.

“OK,” “Sheeple” Says Scrabble, Which Added 300 New Words to Official Dictionary

“For a living language, the only constant is change,” says Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for Merriam-Webster

September 25, 2018

London Stone sat largely unnoticed behind this iron grill for roughly 50 years

London’s Lucky Stone—Referenced by Shakespeare, Blake—Set to Return to Rightful Place

It’s been identified as a remnant of an ancient Roman monument, the altar employed in Druidic human sacrifice, even the stone that yielded Excalibur

September 25, 2018

The unabashed depiction of violence seen in Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" underscores its creator’s bestial inclinations

Art Meets Science

Caravaggio May Have Died of Infected Sword Wound, Not Syphilis

The Italian Old Master had a notoriously mercurial temperament and was forced to flee Rome in 1606 after killing his rival in a duel

September 25, 2018

An aerial view of the razed Mackintosh building following the June 2018 fire

Glasgow School of Art Will Be Rebuilt, But Construction Could Last Up to a Decade

In June, an inferno blazed through the Scottish school’s historic Mackintosh Building, which was under renovation following a 2014 fire

September 24, 2018

Cool Finds

Maldivian Government Destroys World’s First Intertidal Art Gallery

Before President Abdulla Yasmeen lost the country’s election, his government ordered the demolition of the conservation-minded underwater sculpture garden

Updated: September 24, 2018 | Originally Published: July 27, 2018

Ptil Tekhelet sells tzitzit, or fringes attached to the corners of Jewish prayer shawls, colored with dye from the Murex trunculus snail

Jerusalem Museum Untangles History of the Color Blue, From Biblical Hue to Ancient Royalty

The show inks out the history of the enigmatic sky blue dye known as ‘tekhelet’

September 21, 2018

Remembering Arthur Mitchell, the Barrier-Breaking Black Ballet Dancer

Mitchell joined the New York City Ballet in 1955 and later founded the Dance Theater of Harlem

September 21, 2018

This 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, believed to be by John C. Wolfe, depicts the young presidential nominee without his signature beard

More Than 700 Lincoln Collectibles Are Set to Go on Auction

Historian Harold Holzer amassed his extraordinary collection of lithographs, prints and assorted Lincolniana over the course of half a century

September 21, 2018

Denise Mueller Korenek just broke the Cycling World Land Speed Record

Cyclist Denise Mueller-Korenek hit 183.932 MPH while drafting behind a drag racer in Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, besting the previous record of 167 mph

September 20, 2018