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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

An inflatable raft appears to float through the crowd during Little Simz's performance at Glastonbury.

Banksy Takes Credit For an Inflatable Migrant Raft That Floated Across a Glastonbury Crowd

The street artist’s latest stunt is thought to be a criticism of the U.K.’s immigration policies

A team of Italian and Egyptian archaeologists discovered the tombs along the west bank of the Nile.

Cool Finds

Trove of Tombs Sheds Light on How Ancient Egyptian Families Lived—and Died

The finds include mummies from many social classes, some of whom were buried alongside relatives after succumbing to disease

A circa 1846 portrait of Dolley Madison by John Plumbe Jr.

Women Who Shaped History

The Smithsonian Acquires the Earliest Known Photograph of an American First Lady

The National Portrait Gallery purchased an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolley Madison for $456,000

Marina Abramović leads a seven minute silence for peace at Glastonbury.  

Artist Marina Abramović Silences Glastonbury Crowd for Seven Minutes

The typically boisterous crowd went quiet for a collective peace protest

The slippers were on loan at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, when they were stolen in 2005.

The Judy Garland Museum Wants to Buy Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers

Officials hope to raise millions to bid on the shoes, which were missing for over a decade, at auction in December

Born in 1881 in Spain, Pablo Picasso spent most of his life in Paris, where he helped develop Cubism with French painter Georges Braque.

You Can Now See Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works in a New Online Archive

The Picasso Museum in Paris has released a digital portal featuring the Spanish painter and sculptor’s art

St. Gregory of Nazianzus is finally heading home to Germany.

This Rubens Painting Vanished During World War II. Now, It’s Returning Home to a Castle in Germany

“St. Gregory of Nazianzus,” once part of the Baroque palace’s collection, was stolen and sold at the end of the war

The Wolfe family met Kevin as a puppy, but he grew to be three feet and two inches tall.

The World’s Tallest Male Dog Dies Days After Receiving the Record

Kevin, a Great Dane, measured over three feet tall—about the same size as an average 3-year-old child

The annual parade was founded in Brooklyn's Coney Island in 1983.

At Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade, Thousands Channel Aquatic Weirdness

Crowds decked out as fantastical sea creatures flocked to Brooklyn’s amusement district for the summer kickoff event

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

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