Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Ramin Haerizadeh, He Came, He Left, He Left, He Came, 2010, mixed media and collage on canvas, The Farook Collection, Dubai.

Future of Art

Exhibition Shows How Iran’s Present and Past Merge Through Art

The new show at LACMA features 125 works of art from more than 50 artists, some of whom couldn’t make it to the opening because of the travel ban

Fort Collins, Colorado, has been named No. 1 in a new list by People for Bikes ranking U.S. cities on bike safety, infrastructure and improvement.

New System Ranks America’s “Bicycle-Friendly” Cities

Fort Collins, Colorado, was crowned No. 1 in PeopleForBikes’ inaugural list

Scanning Tut's tomb

Trending Today

Sorry, There Are No Secret Chambers in King Tut’s Tomb

After two contradictory radar scans, Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities commissioned a third comprehensive survey that revealed no voids beyond the tomb walls

A photo taken outside of "Hamilton: An American Musical" in Chicago. The new exhibition will join the musical in the Windy City in the fall of 2018.

Future of Art

Hamilfans, Rejoice: Exhibition on the Revolutionary Musical Is Slated to Open This Fall

‘Hamilton: The Exhibition’ is coming to Chicago in November

Future of Art

Digital Forensics Reconstructs Seven Lost Masterpieces

Artwork by Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet and more have been painstakingly remade by Factum Arte for a new television series

Tasty kimchi

Cool Finds

Vegan Kimchi Is Microbially Pretty Close to the Original

A comparison between kimchi made with miso and kimchi made with fish sauce revealed that fermentation equalizes the bacterial communities

A view of the interior of the Temperate House during a press preview of its reopening at Kew Gardens.

Europe

World’s Largest Victorian Glasshouse Opens Doors After Five-Year Restoration Project

London’s Kew Gardens’ Temperate House is home to some of the world’s rarest plants

Robert Bly, one of the poets who scored in the top ten for dynamism.

New Research

Analysis Breaks Down the Annoying “Poet Voice”

It’s not just you; poets also read their works aloud with long pauses, weird cadences and almost no emotion

Stephen Towns. Birth of a Nation. 2014. Private Collection.

Cool Finds

Artist’s Quilts Pay Tribute to African-American Women

Artist Stephen Towns’ first museum exhibition showcases his painterly skill through traditional textile art

An example from a collection of drawings made by Sioux artists living in Fort Yates, North Dakota, in 1913.

Newberry Library Digitizes Trove of Lakota Drawings

The art is part of a larger digitization project of early American history by the Chicago-based research library

Cool Finds

No, the Bone of Saint Clement Was Probably Not Just Found in London’s Trash

A waste hauler found the bone fragment in a case sealed with red wax and tied with red cords. It included a faded label reading: “Ex Oss. S Clementis PM”

Cuneiform tablet seized by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from Hobby Lobby.

Cool Finds

Some of Hobby Lobby’s Smuggled Artifacts May Come From Lost Sumerian City

Among the 3,800 artifacts being repatriated to Iraq today include pieces believed to be from Irisagrig, a site archaeologists have yet to find

None

Future of Art

Experience Some of the World’s Most Polluted Cities in This Exhibit

The art installation was recently on display in London

Isaac Bashevis Singer by Yousuf Karsh

Trending Today

Scholar Finds New Isaac Bashevis Singer Story

“The Boarder,” which is published for the first time in the New Yorker, was discovered while going through the prominent writer’s vast archives

This Mawson & Swan camera owned by Winslow Homer, ca. 1882, was gifted to Bowdoin College Museum of Art by Neal Paulsen.

Exhibition to Bring Winslow Homer’s Long-Lost Camera—and Photography—Into Focus

After four years of research, the new medium’s impact on Homer’s art will be explored this summer at Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Contracted crews remove the Fountain of the Pioneers complex from Bronson Park, Tuesday, April 24, 2018.

Kalamazoo Removes Sculpture Depicting Armed White Settler Towering Over a Native American

“Fountain of the Pioneers” has been controversial since it was erected in 1940

A new study suggests Shigir Idol, a carved wooden sculpture first discovered in the late 1890s, is more than 11,000 years old.

Wooden Statue Found in Late 1890s Likely Dates Back More Than 11,000 Years

New research posits it is one of the oldest-known examples of monumental art

Trending Today

Why Swaziland Is Now the Kingdom of eSwatini

The king has declared it will use its pre-colonial Swazi name from now on

Why Researchers Believe These 100,000-Year-Old Etchings Weren’t Symbolic

In a new study, the markings — which resemble hashtags —were not found to be distinctive based on time and geography

Hank Willis Thomas sculpture

Five Things to See at Alabama’s New Memorial to Lynching Victims

The memorial, along with a new museum, exposes America’s fraught legacy of racial violence from slavery to lynchings to mass incarceration

Page 166 of 290