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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Disassembled Childhood Home Is for Sale… on eBay

It has yet to receive any bids

Workers use a crane to lift the monument dedicated to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney from outside Maryland State House, in Annapolis, Maryland, early Friday morning.

Statue of Roger B. Taney Removed From Maryland State House

Taney, the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case

A rendering of how a performance on the Floating Museum's moving exhibit "River Assembly"

Catch the Museum Floating Through the Chicago River

On a converted barge, the Floating Museum reflects on Chicago’s industrial past and cultural present

AI is now able to synthesize new sounds from old ones, and even compose original music

Art Meets Science

AI Is Edging Into the Art World in Psychedelic Ways

The team at Google is using neural networks to create tools that they hope will inspire and channel creativity

Shakespeare wrote 'Macbeth,' which features three witches, during James I's reign, which also was the time of some of England's most famous witch trials.

England’s Witch Trials Were Lawful

It might seem like collective madness today, but the mechanisms for trying witches in England were enshrined in law

Happy National Soft Serve Day!

The Science of Soft Serve

It’s just like regular ice cream–with a few big differences

Campers near Chaco Canyon, N.M., gather together and look to the east to watch the sun rise on August 17, 1987, as part of the harmonic convergence.

Trending Today

Thirty Years Ago, People Tried to Save the World By Meditating

Believers in the Harmonic Convergence traveled to places like Chaco Canyon and Stonehenge to welcome aliens, the resurrected Maya and wait for world peace

Artists like Paula Modersohn-Becker sought to incorporate exotic elements into their art in Germany's colonial era, such as the bananas shown in this 1905 painting

German Art Museum Tackles Legacy of Colonialism

Looking hard at its own collection, Kunsthalle Bremen aims to challenge the racism of colonialism that persists today

The enigmatic Yayoi Kusama built a museum for her work in near total secrecy

Yayoi Kusama Secretly Built a Museum

Opening October 1, the Tokyo museum will showcase art and archives from the visionary avant-garde Japanese artist

You Can Own Mark Twain’s Connecticut Farmhouse

The author gifted the property to his daughter in 1909. Not long after, tragedy struck

Pierre de Fermat left behind a truly tantalizing hint of a proof when he died—one that mathematicians struggled to complete for centuries.

The Romance of Fermat’s Last Theorem

Fermat left a lot of theorems lying around. Mathematicians proved them all–except one

Workers remove the Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson monument in Wyman Park early Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017.

Baltimore Quietly Removes Four Confederate Monuments

Mayor Catherine Pugh said the statues “needed to come down”

"Black Iron Ursa" by Jason Chase

Art Meets Science

Artists Can Now Buy One of the World’s Blackest Blacks

Singularity Black is not the blackest hue out there, but it is the darkest color currently available to the general public

Cloth Smuggled Out of Syrian Prison Bears Witness to Atrocities Wrought by the Civil War

The U.S. Holocaust Museum has received the cloth scraps, which bears the names of 82 inmates written in chicken bones, rust, and blood

“Love Symbol #2”

Trending Today

Prince Now Has His Own Shade of Purple

The Pantone Color Institute has debuted “Love Symbol #2,” a deep purple based on the late star’s custom-made piano

Thanks to Disney, this story is so ubiquitous that 'Bambi' is a common shorthand for 'baby deer.'

If You Think ‘Bambi’ Seems Too Mature For Kids, You’re Not Wrong

The popular novel was even a Book-of-the-Month Club selection

Big Ben to Fall Silent During Four-Year Renovation Project

It is the longest time that Big Ben has been paused during its 157-year history

Still image from "Don't Be a Sucker," first released by U.S. War Department in 1943.

WWII Anti-Fascist Film Goes Viral After Charlottesville

“Don’t Be A Sucker,” which was released in 1943, urged viewers to take a stand against divisive, prejudicial rhetoric

Yisrael Kristal receiving his Guinness certificate

Trending Today

World’s Oldest Man, a Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 113

Candy maker Yisrael Kristal survived Auschwitz and celebrated his bar mitzvah 100 years after turning 13

Casey stands at bat in a 1912 illustrated version of the poem.

‘Casey at the Bat’ Leaves a Lot of Unanswered Questions

Was there a Casey? Where did he strike out? Does it really matter?

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