Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Crown, gold and gilded copper with glass beads, pigment and fabric, made in Ethiopia, 1600-1850

London Museum Says It’s Willing to Return Looted Ethiopian Artifacts on Long-Term Loan

A new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum grapples with Britain’s seizure of cultural treasures during the 1868 Battle of Maqdala

Judy Chicago's Sappho plate

Cool Finds

Now You Too Can Eat Off of Judy Chicago’s Famous Feminist Dinnerware

Reproductions of four plate designs from “The Dinner Party” are available for the first time

This Colorful Exhibition Was Made for Instagram

Artist CJ Hendry’s latest house-like installation assigned each room a distinct color

Cool Finds

“Lost” Feminist Dinner Set Goes on Public Display for the First Time

The 50-plate “Famous Women Dinner Set” by Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant includes portraits of the well-known and the overlooked

The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist

Europe

Ancient Statue Destroyed by ISIS Resurrected in London—With a Twist

Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz has created a reproduction of the statue using 10,500 date syrup cans

A scene from The City Without Jews.

1924 Film That Anticipates the Holocaust Found and Restored

A collector found a complete copy of the film at a flea market in Paris in 2015

Cool Finds

400-Year-Old Painting by Dutch Master Found in Iowa Storage Room

Otto van Veen’s “Apollo and Venus” was likely hidden away by the Des Moines Women’s Club for showing too much skin

A rendering of the Statue of Unity.

India Is Building the World’s Tallest Statue

The monument will stand nearly 600 feet tall and it honors India’s first deputy prime minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Last year, Sesame Street introduced Julia, a Muppet with autism.

Sesame Place Becomes First Theme Park to Be Designated a Certified Autism Center

The International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards announced the honor on World Autism Day

New Statue Immortalizes Mary Thomas, Who Led a Revolt Against Danish Colonial Rule

It is the city’s first public monument to a black woman

Two related images from The Book of Ishness, a sketchbook of abstract paintings that Tolkien began while he was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford. The images date from early 1914 when Tolkien was in his third year.

Europe

Unseen Illustrations by J.R.R. Tolkien Are Coming to Oxford

“Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth,” opening at the Bodleian libraries this summer, will include manuscripts, letters, maps and artwork

An original drawing of 'The Palace of the Sun' by Charles Le Brun, designed to be painted on the ceiling of the Grand salon of Vaux-le-Vicomte.

Europe

Never Realized 17th-Century Fresco Will Be Digitally Recreated at French Château

The masterpiece was originally planned by the great French painter Charles Le Brun

CARNE y ARENA, 2017. A user in the experience.

Future of Art

VR Installation of Crossing U.S.-Mexico Border Comes to Nation’s Capital

“Carne y Arena,” by Academy Award-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu, will run in D.C. through August

Mary McLeod Bethune in 1949

Trending Today

U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall Collection Will Get Its First State-Commissioned Statue of a Black American

A statue of educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune will replace a statue of a Confederate general

Eldgjá, Iceland

A Violent Volcanic Eruption Immortalized in Medieval Poem May Have Spurred Iceland’s Adoption of Christianity

A new study looks for traces of the devastating volcanic event in a poem composed in approximately 961 A.D.

The Temptations

Library of Congress Adds ‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘My Girl’ to National Recording Registry

Each year since 2002, 25 recordings that impacted American culture are chosen for inclusion in the growing database. Read about the class of 2017

In this 12th century illuminated manuscript Mary Magdalene announces the resurrection to the apostles.

Cool Finds

New Exhibition Unfolds the “Bizarre” Stories Behind Centuries-Old Pigments

Cow urine is one of many strange ingredients included in the University of Manchester’s new show exploring the history and chemistry of artists’ palettes

Landmark Exhibition Takes You Inside the Exuberant, Diverse World of the Fatimid Dynasty

Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum brings together 87 pieces from collections across the globe

Investigators on Lookout for 314 Items Stolen From Carnegie Library’s Rare Books Room

A first edition of Isaac Newton’s “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” was among the items taken

None

Coming Soon

Become a Nicer, Gentler Neighbor With This Trailer for a Documentary About Mister Rogers

To mark the late children’s television visionary’s 90th birthday, Focus Features teases a clip of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Page 168 of 290