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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

Residents of Billionaire's Row's newest building enjoy stunning views of Central Park.

The World’s Skinniest Skyscraper Has a Storied Musical Past

At 1,428 feet tall and just 60 feet wide, Steinway Tower is so slender that its top floors may sway in the wind

Three spears have returned to southeastern Australia for the first time and are being displayed at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum.

Captain Cook and His Crew Stole These Spears. Centuries Later, They’re Finally Back in Sydney

The artifacts are on display alongside modern spears created by the descendants of the Indigenous Dharawal people

Francis Hines, Untitled, 1983, hardpoint pastel on Arches paper mounted on wood with synthetic fabric wraps

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A Connecticut Mechanic Found Artwork Worth Millions in a Dumpster

Jared Whipple discovered the life’s work of Francis Hines, a largely forgotten Abstract Expressionist artist

Pablo Picasso, The Blue Room, 1901, oil on canvas

What Secrets Lie Beneath the Surface of Picasso’s Blue Period Paintings?

An exhibition at the Phillips Collection reveals hidden compositions beneath three of the Cubist’s canvases

Many superheroes are orphans. A new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London explores how parental loss shapes their heroic trajectories. 

Why So Many Superheroes Are Orphans

A new exhibition at London’s Foundling Museum explores how growing up without birth parents shapes comic book characters

The owners of Yves Klein's invisible art were encouraged to burn their receipts. The artist, meanwhile, threw half of the profits from the sale—paid in solid gold—into the Seine.

Anonymous Buyer Pays Over $1 Million for a Piece of Invisible Art

The receipt for one of Yves Klein’s “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” was described by Sotheby’s as an early NFT

A zoomed-in view of Edgar Degas' Ukrainian Dancers, previously known as Russian Dancers

Museum Renames Degas’ ‘Russian Dancers’ in Nod to Ukraine

The change arrives amid a push for cultural institutions to recognize distinctions between Russian and Ukrainian culture

A soup bowl monster made of yarn, created by DALL-E 2.

Innovation for Good: Game Changers

What Do WALL-E and Salvador Dalí Have in Common? Meet DALL-E 2

This new and improved A.I. system can produce photorealistic images of anything on demand

Greta Thunberg addresses climate strikers at Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado.

Greta Thunberg Is Publishing the ‘Ultimate Guide’ to Climate Change

The book will feature contributions from over 100 novelists, scientists and activists

The results of the analysis—that society’s concept of “person” prioritizes men over women—suggests a “fundamental bias in our species’ collective view of itself,” write the researchers in the paper.

Gender-Neutral Words Like ‘People’ and ‘Person’ Are Perceived as Male, Study Suggests

Researchers found that society’s concept of “person” and similar terms prioritizes men over women

Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, The Sense of Smell, 1617–1618

What Does This 17th-Century Painting Smell Like?

A new exhibition in Spain incorporates ten fragrances inspired by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Sense of Smell”

NPS Ranger Betty Reid Soskin sits in front of the Rosie the Riveter Visitor Center.

Women Who Shaped History

Betty Reid Soskin, Oldest National Park Service Ranger, Retires at 100

As an NPS employee, she promoted the stories of African American people and women of color who contributed to the home front effort during WWII

Today, Amache is mostly barren grassland dotted with crumbling foundations and a few historic buildings and replicas.

Japanese American Incarceration Camp in Colorado Receives Federal Protection

The Granada Relocation Center, also known as Amache, grew to become the state’s tenth largest city at its peak during World War II

Fones Cliffs along the Rappahannock River in Virginia. Last week, the Rappahannock Tribe announced the reacquisition of 465 acres of ancestral homeland along the river.

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Ancestral Homeland Returned to Rappahannock Tribe After More Than 350 Years

The historic reacquisition spans 465 acres in the Northern Neck of Virginia

A small library on Maine's Matinicus Island is actively collecting banned books in a challenge against recent political efforts to remove controversial literature off the shelves of libraries and school curriculums.

This Small Library Off the Coast of Maine Is Collecting Banned Books

With challenges to books in the United States at a high, the Matinicus Island Library is a remote haven for controversial literature

The food library and museum is slated to reopen later this spring.

A Museum in Rome Narrates Italian History Through Cookbooks and Kitchenware

Reopening this spring, Garum explores more than 500 years of local culinary traditions

The lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong as part of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission in will be auctioned off with a number of space-related items, and is expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million at auction

Trending Today

Apollo 11 Moon Dust Samples Go Up for Auction Against NASA’s Wishes

Auction house Bonhams is expecting around $1 million

“[T]his study show[s] how the owner of the house stimulated the visitor’s senses to convey a message about its power and wealth,” says co-author Danilo M. Campanaro in a statement.

Why Archaeologists Virtually Reconstructed an Ancient House in Pompeii

The team hopes to simulate how visitors would have experienced the space and gain a stronger understanding of the motivation behind Roman designs

A worker prepares a hot air balloon during a festival in Ba Vi National Park, west of Hanoi, Vietnam.

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Uplifting stories to brighten your day

A protester holds a sunflower during a London rally in support of Ukraine on March 26, 2022.

Why Sunflowers Are Ukraine’s National Flower

People around the world are embracing the bright bloom as a symbol of solidarity with the beleaguered country

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