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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

A Forster's tern appears to float upside-down after emerging from underwater at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, California.

See 12 Captivating Bird Images From the Audubon Photography Awards

In its 15th year, the contest showcases diverse avian species, their fascinating behaviors and the habitats needed to keep them alive

Officials still don't know where the six-foot-five structure came from.

Cool Finds

Mysterious Monolith Appears Outside of Las Vegas

The reflective metal structure was found on a hiking trail in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge

The Judgement of Paris, Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1632–35

Cool Finds

This Rubens Masterpiece Was Significantly Altered by Another Artist

Important details in “The Judgement of Paris” appear to have been changed several decades after the artist’s death

Archaeologists used manned and unmanned submersibles to recover artifacts from the wrecks.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Recover 900 Artifacts From Ming Dynasty Shipwrecks in South China Sea

The trove of objects—including pottery, porcelain, shells and coins—was found roughly a mile below the surface

Photographer Miles Astray shot this image of a flamingo scratching itself with its beak on a beach in Aruba.

How a Real Photo of a Flamingo Snuck Into—and Won—an A.I. Art Competition

The photographer entered the image into a contest’s artificial intelligence category to “prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance”

Titian, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, 1508

A Twice-Looted Titian Masterpiece Once Discovered at a Bus Stop Hits the Auction Block

The painting, “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt,” could sell for as much as $30 million

The artworks are the only pendant marital portraits of an Amsterdam couple that Hals ever created.

These Dutch Newlyweds Had Their Portraits Painted Nearly 400 Years Ago. But Who Were They?

A curator has finally figured out the identity of the couple painted by Frans Hals around 1637

Ursula K. Le Guin in 2005.

You Could Write in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Former Portland Home Studio

The Le Guin family has donated the science fiction novelist’s former house to be used for a new writers residency

Maternal Caress, Mary Cassatt, 1896

Women Who Shaped History

Mary Cassatt’s Paintings Take Women’s Labor Seriously

A new exhibition challenges longstanding assumptions about the American Impressionist’s artistic legacy

Food, Fruit and Glass on a Table, Peter Binoit, circa 1620s

Two Nazi-Looted Paintings Were Returned to a Jewish Family, Who Donated Them Back to the Louvre

The 17th-century artworks were recovered from Germany and placed at the Paris museum in the 1950s

The rocket-firing Boba Fett action figure was supposed to be a giveaway. But executives at American toy company Kenner later realized the missile was a choking hazard.

This Boba Fett Figure Is Now the Most Valuable Vintage Toy in the World

Created in 1979, the rare missile-firing figurine has become a “mythic icon” among collectors

The correspondence is undated, but experts think Kafka wrote it in the spring of 1920.

An Ailing Franz Kafka Curses Writer’s Block in This Handwritten Letter to a Friend

“I haven’t written anything for three years,” he admitted in the note, which will go to auction this summer

Photographer Ansel Adams adjusting his camera

Ansel Adams Estate Condemns Adobe for Selling A.I.-Generated Images Mimicking the Photographer’s Style

The black-and-white landscape dupes, which have since been taken down, violated Adobe’s generative A.I. policies

Ace-Liam Ankrah works on a painting.

Guinness Names Ghana Toddler as the ‘World’s Youngest Male Artist’

Ace-Liam Ankrah, who turns 2 in July, has already hosted a solo exhibition and sold 15 original pieces

Lego enthusiasts can now build their own Notre-Dame Cathedral, complete with rose windows and the iconic spire.

The Paris Olympics

Builders Haven’t Finished Reconstructing Notre-Dame Cathedral—But Lego Fans Can

Lego is selling a 4,383-piece model of the historic structure ahead of the upcoming Paris Olympics

Poppy Field, Claude Monet, 1873

Climate Activist Vandalizes a Monet With an Apocalyptic Image

A protester was arrested on Saturday after plastering a poster over “Poppy Field” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris

Rania Matar, Farah, 2020

This Woman-Led Photography Exhibition Showcases the Diversity of Middle Eastern Femininity

The Middle East Institute show, “Louder Than Hearts,” explores portraits of Arab and Iranian women through the lens of ten celebrated female artists

American authorities rounded up all 600 of the artifacts in a single year.

Trove of 600 Looted Italian Artifacts Worth $65 Million Comes Home

The collection includes artifacts spanning the ninth century B.C.E. to the second century C.E.

One of the lost works discovered in AMU's University Library with annotations from the Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm Did Much More Than Tell Fairy Tales

A recent discovery in a Polish library of 27 books that were thought to have been lost sheds light on the breadth of the German scholars’ work

This charcoal sketch of gladiators was drawn from memory, not imagination, researchers say.

Cool Finds

The Children of Pompeii Saw Gladiators Fight to the Death—and They Drew Graffiti About It

Researchers recently discovered bloodshed-themed stick-figure sketches in a cluster of houses in the doomed ancient city

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