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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Why Censors Are Targeting Winnie-the-Pooh in China

Social media users have compared the honey-loving bear to Chinese President Xi Jinping

The White House's

How a Groundbreaking Interior Designer Helped Jackie O. Change the White House

Sister Parish is credited with creating American country style, a recognizable and quirky mix of old and new

Text an Emoji and the SFMOMA Will Respond with a Picture of Art

A new text messaging service lets users explore the museum’s vast collection

A family walks towards the entrance of Disneyland, circa 1960.

Disneyland’s Terrible First Day Didn’t Stop the Crowds From Coming

Nothing was ready. But by the end of the first week, more than 100,000 people had visited

"Dodge's Ridge"

At 100, Andrew Wyeth Still Brushes People the Right (and Wrong) Way

The centennial of his birth offers galleries and critics the opportunity to reconsider one of America’s most famous painters

Barkley L. Hendricks, "Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale)," 1969

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Revolutionary Black Artists of the Civil Rights Era Get Exhibition in the UK

“Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” features iconic works alongside pieces that have long been overlooked by the mainstream

Sixty Years After Its Discovery, a Hut in Scotland Has Been Linked to St. Columba

Radiocarbon dating has proved that the site could have been built and used during the lifetime of the revered saint

The flea-market Enigma machine

Cool Finds

WWII Enigma Machine Found at Flea Market Sells for $51,000

The legendary coding machine was first unearthed by a mathematician with a careful eye who purchased it for roughly $114

London Tube Scraps ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ Announcements

Officials say they want all passengers to feel welcome on the Underground

Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann reads from the words of Liu Xiaobo when he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Xiaobo was imprisoned and unable to accept the award.

Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo Dies at Age 61

The human rights activist spent his final years in Chinese custody

Kermit the frog (left) and puppeteer Steve Whitmire (right) speak at a Commic-Con panel this year in San Diego.

Kermit the Frog Gets a New Voice for the First Time in 27 Years

Steve Whitmire, who voiced Kermit since Jim Henson’s death in 1990, has departed from the Muppets

This grand-prize-winning image captures a touching moment between a parent gentoo penguin and its and chick.

Art Meets Science

Diverse Splendor of Birds on Display in Audubon Photo Competition

100 of the top submissions can now be viewed online

Two views of the curvy "Venus of Hohle Fels."

Trending Today

World’s Oldest Figurative Art is Now an Official World Treasure

The new Unesco world heritage site spans six caves located in the Swabian Alps in Germany

Completed in 1939, the Fiat Tagliero service station is one of the city's many Art Deco structures.

Asmara, the Capital of Eritrea, Named World Heritage Site

Eritrean officials lobbied for the designation in a bid to reform their country’s isolationist image

Mutineers walk in on a chaplain "with a smoking pistol in his hand" in the Arthur Conan Doyle short story "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."

Thank Sherlock Holmes for the Phrase ‘Smoking Gun’

From its origins to modern day, the favorite cliché of detectives and journalists everywhere refuses to kick the bucket

Josiah Wedgwood, of Wedgwood pottery fame, was also a staunch abolitionist and designed this medallion to further the cause.

This Anti-Slavery Jewelry Shows the Social Concerns (and the Technology) of Its Time

The ‘Wedgwood Slave Medallion’ was the first modern piece of protest jewelry

Vatican Vetoes Gluten-Free Communion Wafers

It’s a sticky issue for Catholics with celiac disease or other gluten sensitivities

The first page of 'Measure For Measure' in the First Folio of 1623. Set in Vienna and full of less-than-proper characters, this play proved the most challenging to bowdlerize.

The Bowdlers Wanted to Clean Up Shakespeare, Not Become a Byword for Censorship

Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler started out with relatively noble intentions

Smithsonian Curator Weighs In on Photo That Allegedly Shows Amelia Earhart in Japanese Captivity

A History Channel special claims that a National Archives photo shows the pilot sitting on a dock in the Pacific, but experts are skeptical

Experts say that Raphael painted an allegorical figure of Justice on the far right of this elaborate fresco, which depicts the battle between Constantine and his rival, Maxentius.

Unknown Raphael Paintings Discovered in the Vatican

Restoration work in the Hall of Constantine uncovered two allegorical figures that Raphael appears to have painted before his untimely death in 1520

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