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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Harriet Tubman’s Canadian Church Is Struggling to Survive

The Salem Chapel in St. Catharines, Ontario, is in desperate need of repairs

"Black Bart" robbed at least 28 stagecoaches in his lifetime. He left poems at two of them.

The Poetic Tale of Literary Outlaw Black Bart

Stagecoach robber Charles Bole took the inspiration for his pseudonym from pulp fiction

A familiar-looking image from the Uncrustables patent.

Can a Sandwich Be Intellectual Property?

This is the story of a patent war over PB&J

Johannes Vermeer, "Woman with a Pearl Necklace," c. 1662-65

Envisioning Vermeer, Master of Genre Painting, at the National Gallery of Art

Exhibition explores the Dutch artist’s connections with his contemporaries

Jitish Kallat's "Circadian Rhyme 1" addresses heightened security measures

What Does Post-9/11 Art Mean? Imperial War Museum Explores the Question in ‘Age of Terror’

Works by Ai Weiwei, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Coco Fusco respond to contemporary violence and conflict

Why Saudi Arabia Giving a Robot Citizenship Is Firing People Up

Saudi Arabia’s newest citizen is a robot named Sophia and she already has more rights than human women who live in the country

Puerto Rico

Archaeologists Date Pre-Hispanic Puerto Rican Rock Art for the First Time

A new analysis looks at the thousands of images found in caves on Mona Island, a spiritual hub for the Taino culture

Australia Will Ban Climbing Uluru, a Sacred Indigenous Site, in 2019

The long-awaited move honors Anangu beliefs, which hold that ancestral beings reside inside the rock

Claude Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" is one of the roughly 1,500 works in Gurlitt's collection

The Public Can Finally See Works From the Infamous Nazi-Looted Art Trove

Two exhibitions are exploring the treasures and context behind the cache of “degenerate” art uncovered in a Munich apartment in 2012

Mata Hari (Malay for “eye of the day”) captivated European audiences with her spiritual yet sexually charged performances

Revisiting the Myth of Mata Hari, From Sultry Spy to Government Scapegoat

One hundred years after her death, a new exhibit is putting the spotlight on the dancer’s life and legacy

A hasty 1900 pigeongram sent to H. Winkelmann by Charles Werner, a great Barrier Island resident. "Dear Mr Winkelmann," it reads, "Charlie Soborne has smashed his arm last night from the wrist to the elbow by a rifle bullet. His father says that the arm will have to be amputated at once so Ernest asked me to send you this... send a steamer at once to the Barrier... also if possible a lawyer."

This New Zealand Island’s Pigeon Mail Stamps Are Still Prized

Pigeons carried correspondence between Great Barrier Island and the New Zealand mainland for about a decade in the early 20th century

The DuSable Museum was originally located in the main floor parlor of this house.

America’s Oldest Museum of Black Culture Started in a Living Room

The DuSable Museum of African American History was founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, born on this day in 1915

The new edition of Vita Sackville-West's story features art deco-style illustrations

Now You Can Read the Stamp-Sized Story That May Have Inspired Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”

Vita Sackville-West’s hero predates and mirrors Woolf’s androgynous time-traveler

Holmes and Watson have had years of adventures together, but the first time they ever appeared in print was in a story Arthur Conan Doyle set in Utah.

The Creator of Sherlock Holmes Was, Like Many Victorians, Fascinated by Mormons

The first story featuring iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ was published on this day in 1887—and set in Mormon Utah

Cool Finds

Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots Found Hidden Beneath Another Painting

The politically dangerous work was painted over by Adrian Vanson two year after the queen’s execution

American Indian Movement leader Dennis Banks

Dennis Banks, Native American Civil Rights Warrior, Has Died

He rose to national attention after spearheading a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota

Two millennia after it served as a floor on a Roman emperor's ship and decades after it disappeared mysteriously, this mosaic returns to Italy

Roman Mosaic, Long Used as a Coffee Table, Returned To Italy

The mosaic hails from a “pleasure ship” built by the notorious emperor Caligula

Trending Today

Understanding the Doping Controversy That’s Hit Sled Dog Racing

Four-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey’s dogs tested positive for banned substances, but Seavey claims it was sabotage

Kathleen Gilje, Linda Nochlin in Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 2006, oil on linen, 37 x 51 inches.

Linda Nochlin, Pioneering Feminist Art Historian, Has Died

Nochlin is best known for a 1971 essay theorizing that social institutions—and not a lack of talent—held women back in the art world

Lee receiving the Medal of Freedom in 2007

Cool Finds

Unpublished Harper Lee Letters Purchased at Auction Share Intimate Reflections

The letters from the To Kill a Mockingbird scribe include remembrances of Hollywood celebrities, a bit of history and some sass

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