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Smart News / Smart News Arts & Culture

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.

Good News

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.

Good News

Good News

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

Sandbags are piled high around a statue of the Duc de Richelieu in Odessa, Ukraine, on March 14, 2022.

Inside the Efforts to Preserve Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage

Here’s how experts and civilians alike are working to protect the country’s art, artifacts and scientific specimens

"Donatello: The Renaissance" makes a case for the Renaissance sculptor as one of the leading artists of his generation.

Why Donatello Was a Father of the Renaissance

A blockbuster exhibition in Florence argues that the Italian sculptor deserves to be a household name on par with Michelangelo and Raphael

"The Mice at Work: Threading the Needle," The Tailor of Gloucester artwork, 1902; watercolour, ink and gouache on paper.

Leap Into the Surprising, Art-Filled Life of Beatrix Potter in a New Exhibition

The beloved author of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” also wrote diaries in code, sketched fungi and raised prize-winning sheep

The Academy Museum of Motions Pictures received backlash on its opening for failing to portray the stories of Hollywood's Jewish founders.

The Academy Awards Museum Will Create New Exhibition on Hollywood’s Jewish Roots in Response to Criticism

When the museum opened last year, industry leaders and donors expressed disappointment at what they saw as a stunning omission in the exhibition content

Stephen Thaler's AI creation, A Recent Entrance to Paradise, has been denied copyright protection by the US Copyright Office.

U.S. Copyright Office Rules A.I. Art Can’t Be Copyrighted

An image generated through artificial intelligence lacked the “human authorship” necessary for protection

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