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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Paddington, the storybook bear who keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat, is getting his own musical in 2025.

Paddington Will Take Center Stage in Musical Adaptation

The beloved bear dressed in a blue duffle coat and red hat is set to sing and dance with the Brown family in 2025

A jogger passing a cow

This Photographer Captured One Image of Cambridge Every Day for 13 Years

After 5,000 photos, Martin Bond has decided to conclude his project, which showcased the city’s mundane and extraordinary moments

Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone (1990)

‘Home Alone,’ ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ and More Join the National Film Registry

Twenty-five films were chosen based on their “cultural, historic or aesthetic” importance

Italian opera singing is now among the hundreds of cultural practices officially recognized by UNESCO.

Italian Opera Singing Is Now Protected by the U.N.

UNESCO announced 55 new additions to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage

A still from Hayao Miyazaki’s new film, The Boy and the Heron

Is ‘The Boy and the Heron’ Really Hayao Miyazaki’s Last Film?

Following many failed attempts to retire, the legendary animator has released a new semi-autobiographical feature

Fialka's reading group in Venice, California, in 2008

A Book Club Began ‘Finnegans Wake’ in 1995. After 28 Years, It Finally Reached the End

The group meets once a month to talk about one or two pages of the bewildering James Joyce novel

A selection of outfits designed by women on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

New Met Exhibition Celebrates Women Fashion Designers

“Women Dressing Women” gives often-forgotten figures in fashion history their due

The 2024 color of the year is Peach Fuzz.

Peach Fuzz Is Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2024

The gentle, pinkish-orange hue was chosen to reflect a collective desire for respite

The musical Hell's Kitchen, seen here at the Public Theater, will be moving to Broadway in the spring.

Alicia Keys’ ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Will Open on Broadway

The musical is loosely based on the 15-time Grammy winner’s childhood

Gene Simmons, Tommy Thayer and Paul Stanley of Kiss perform at Madison Square Garden in New York City on December 2, 2023.

Art Meets Science

Kiss Debuts Digital Avatars That Will Keep the Band ‘Forever Young and Forever Iconic’

The rock band is the first in the U.S. to immortalize its performances with a digital recreation

Emilie Gossiaux's Londons Dancing with Flowers (2023)

New Exhibition Celebrates the Bond Between an Artist and Her Guide Dog

Artist Emilie Gossiaux has been working with a 13-year-old lab named London for a decade

Luna Luna's creator, André Heller, stands on a merry-go-round designed by Keith Haring in June 1987.

When Keith Haring, Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Basquiat Created an Art Amusement Park

A resurrected version of Luna Luna, a fairground started by artist André Heller in 1987, opens in Los Angeles later this month

Installation view of the Brooklyn Museum's "Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines," on view through March 2024

How Zines Brought Power to Those on the Margins of Culture

A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum examines zines’ role in art history and community building

David Hockney's Bigger Christmas Trees, which will light up London’s Battersea Power Station every evening until December 25

David Hockney Illuminates London’s Battersea Power Station With Digital Christmas Trees

The celebrated 86-year-old designed the large-scale holiday displays using his iPad

Jane Austen's signature is on the title page of the book.

Jane Austen’s Annotated Copy of ‘Curiosities of Literature’ Is For Sale

The novelist used a pencil to underline roughly 15 passages from the text by Isaac D’Israeli

Rizz is unusual, in that it's an abbreviated version of the word "charisma" that comes from the middle of the word.

‘Rizz’ Is Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year

The word means “style, charm or attractiveness” or “the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”

Many of the new additions depict characters from Spicemas, Grenada’s annual carnival celebration.

See the Newest Underwater Sculptures Residing on the Floor of the Caribbean

Originally created in 2006, the Molinière Underwater Sculpture Park recently added 31 new pieces off the coast of the island of Grenada

Musicians at Auschwitz played as part of as many as six orchestras sanctioned by the SS, as well as in secret. A new project by Leo Geyer restores some of the music they composed while imprisoned.

Restored Music Composed by Prisoners at Auschwitz Played Publicly for the First Time

Leo Geyer’s “The Orchestras of Auschwitz” weaves remnants of musical scores written by those at the camp into a piece honoring the Holocaust’s victims

Alice Tate-Harte, a conservator at English Heritage, works on a 17th-century portrait of Diana Cecil.

See a 17th-Century Portrait Restored to Its Original Appearance, Minus Lip Fillers and Other Touch-Ups

Conservators removed cosmetic changes made to a painting of English aristocrat Diana Cecil, likely to match 19th-century beauty standards

The Banksy mural in Dover, England, showed a worker chipping away a star on the European Union flag.

Banksy’s Brexit Mural in Dover Has Been Demolished

Contractors are working to determine whether restoration of the piece’s remains is possible

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