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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Field. Oil on panel by PIX18 / Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University

Cool Finds

Check Out This Year’s Entries to the RobotArt Competition

Thirty-eight teams have submitted almost 200 artworks painted by robots, many guided by artsy artificial intelligence

A Nude Sculpture of George Washington Is Coming to New York

The work was made in preparation for a larger, clothed statue by the Italian artist Antonio Canova

By 1948, when this photo montage was made, Times Square was a riot of lights and special effects. Many of these lighted signs were the work of Douglas Leigh.

Times Square’s Glitzy Look was One Man’s Bright Idea

Douglas Leigh’s ability to imagine new kinds of advertising shaped the signs of the city

Sold: Diary of 28-Year-Old JFK

Kennedy recorded his impressions of a formative trip through post-War Europe

Munch's artistic freakout may have been inspired by mother-of-pearl clouds.

Art Meets Science

“The Scream” Might Have Been Inspired By a Rare Type of Cloud

Did mother-of-pearl clouds stoke a painter’s angst?

Emoji cover the facade of this Dutch building.

Cool Finds

This Building Is Covered in Emoji

-Person raising both hands in celebration-

The filmmaker is hosting what's sure to be a memorable weekend.

Cult Filmmaker John Waters Is Hosting a Summer Camp for Adults

It’s as kooky as you might imagine

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland Museum of Art will Return Stolen Roman Sculpture to Italy

Experts have long voiced concerns about origins of the portrait

Treepedia's map of Toronto

Future of Conservation

MIT’s ‘Treepedia’ Shows How Green Your City Grows

Using data from Google Street View, researchers created an interactive map that measures tree density on city streets

High school: difficult to live through, harder to get right in writing.

‘The Outsiders’ Was Groundbreaking, But It Didn’t Create YA Fiction

Many have claimed that “young adult” fiction didn’t exist before S.E. Hinton wrote her cult classic–but it did, sort of

A spotter with binoculars at an anti-aircraft command post.

Cool Finds

Check Out These Rare Color Images of World War II

The photos are part of a new book from the Imperial War Museums which includes many images published for the first time

A TeleGuide terminal developed in the early 1990s by Swedish phone company Televerket, with IBM and Esselte.

A New Museum in Sweden Is All About Failure

Visit the many examples of products that were short-sighted, short-lived or just silly

This painting by Adriaen Coorte was among art stolen from an East German art collector by the Stasi in the 1980s.

Trending Today

Germany Will Research Stasi Art Seizures

The Nazis weren’t the only group that looted German treasures

Reconstruction of the Tham Lod woman who lived 13,600 years ago

New Research

Researchers Work to Take the Bias Out Of Facial Reconstruction

Instead of relying on European-centric data sets, researchers used a global database to help image a 13,600-year-old woman from Thailand

This illustration from The Murders in the Rue Morgue portrays Dupin, the first literary 'genius detective,' questioning a suspect.

Without Edgar Allan Poe, We Wouldn’t Have Sherlock Holmes

C. Auguste Dupin, Poe’s main character, was the first genius detective

Later Stone Age paintings

New Research

New Technique Shows San Rock Art Is 5,000 Years Old

Using a highly refined form of carbon dating, researchers were able to date the pigments in art in Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa

A Minnesota Home Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Is For Sale, Original Furniture And All

Everything from the floor color to the light fixtures is as the architect designed it

Paul Revere gets all the credit, but he had a little help from his friends.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and Some Other Guys

The midnight ride wasn’t so much a solo operation as it was a relay

The City Palace of Jaipur was designed with vastu shastra ideals

Ancient Architectural Science is Coming to a Renowned Indian Engineering School

Principles of alignment with the sun and magnetic fields in vastu shastra stretch back 8,000 years

A souvenir program from the 1925 Woman's World's Fair in Chicago.

A Look Back at the 1925 Woman’s World Fair

After the success of the Chicago World’s Fair, women made their own event

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