Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Smart News / Smart News Travel

Monet's "Water Lilies" panels were installed at the Musee d'Orangerie in 1927, one year after the artist's death

Step Into Claude Monet’s World With This Immersive VR Exploration of ‘Water Lilies’

New VR experience whisks participants from Paris museum to Impressionist’s Giverny garden and studio

At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, you can see "Atomic Annie," the first and only cannon to ever fire a nuclear shell.

This Veterans Day, Visit America’s Top Military Sites

A new book offers a guide to the museums, bases and once-secret locations that reveal America’s complex military history

Jell-O salad, anyone?

Sweden’s Disgusting Food Museum Is Not for the Faint of Stomach

But the museum isn’t trying to make visitors lose their lunch; instead, it hopes to highlight the cultural subjectivity of food

Édouard Manet, "La Négresse (Portrait of Laure)," 1863. Collection Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin.

Exhibition Re-Examines Modernism’s Black Models

Curator Denise Murrell looks at the unheralded black women featured in some of art history’s masterpieces

A Human Chain Helped a U.K. Bookshop Move to Its New Location

Some 250 volunteers transported more than 2,000 books

Cool Finds

See L.A.’s Strangest Sculpture Shine Bright Once Again

Built in the 1970s, the Triforium was designed to sync light and music but the costly venture was ahead of its time

So long, and thanks for all the fish

At Behest of Derek Jeter, Marlins Park’s Much-Ballyhooed Statue “Homer” Is Going, Going, Gone

The artist is not pleased

Walpole's neo-Gothic estate boasts a castle-like white exterior, labyrinthine network of closets, chambers and rooms

Curious Collection of Historic Oddities Reunited in Horace Walpole’s Neo-Gothic Castle

See more than 150 artifacts originally on view in the estate during the 1700s

Why Are Japan’s Cherry Blossom Trees Blooming in Fall?

Two typhoons followed by warm weather may have triggered Japan’s iconic trees to blossom months ahead of schedule

Venice, one of the cities most at risk, has already installed submerged floodgates aimed at combating flooding, but it’s one of the few to take such preventative action

Rising Seas Pose Imminent Threat to Dozens of Historical Sites Across the Mediterranean

Venetian canals, Phoenician port city of Tyre and Croatia’s Old City of Dubrovnik are amongst the sites at risk of flooding, erosion

Monster of Rome from Image of the Papacy

Rare Book Library Summons Tales of World’s Oldest Monsters

The monsters have arrived at Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Katmai National Park and Preserve has a ton of chubby cubbies. But which bear's bulk will bury the competition in the 2018 Fat Bear Week?

Trending Today

Time to Get Jiggily With it, Fat Bear Week Is Upon Us

Your vote will determine which fish-chomping ursine competitor in Katmai National Park and Preserve is the chubbiest cubby of them all

A 1736 map of Scotland—with Shetland in a box.

New Law Puts Shetland on the Map—and Outside of a Box

Cartographers had previously been in the habit of representing the Scottish islands inside a box because they are located so far from the mainland

Headdress frontlet, ca. 1820–40, by a Tsimshian artist, British Columbia.

Finally, a Native American Exhibition in the Met’s American Wing

91 of the objects on display were gifted to the museum on the condition that they be contextualized within the framework of America’s art history

The institution begins the long road to restoration

Brazil’s National Museum Launches Rebuilding Efforts with Temporary Exhibition of Surviving Collection

Stabilization work must be completed before experts can assess extent of damage to museum’s collection of more than 20 million artifacts

Ma destinée (My destiny), 1867. Brown ink and wash and white gouache on paper.

Landmark Exhibition Brings Victor Hugo’s Forgotten Drawings Into Focus

The famed French author produced some 4,000 brooding, tempestuous artworks during his lifetime

Visitors interacting with the art at Tania Bruguera's new show

Cool Finds

This Art Exhibition Is Guaranteed to Make You Weep

Tania Bruguera’s new show at London’s Tate Modern includes a room spritzed with an organic compound to stimulate “forced empathy”

View of the restored Guarini chapel

Trending Today

21 Years After Fire, Shroud of Turin Chapel Restored to Former Glory

The space, originally designed by priest and mathematician Guarino Guarini, includes a spectacular and intricate wood and marble dome

Altar Frontal (1741), Isfahan. Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin

Armenia

The Met’s Latest Show Traces Armenia’s Cultural Evolution

Armenia! features more than 140 artifacts, including gilded reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, textiles

Cool Finds

Maldivian Government Destroys World’s First Intertidal Art Gallery

Before President Abdulla Yasmeen lost the country’s election, his government ordered the demolition of the conservation-minded underwater sculpture garden

Page 53 of 117