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Smart News / Smart News Travel

Australia Will Ban Climbing Uluru, a Sacred Indigenous Site, in 2019

The long-awaited move honors Anangu beliefs, which hold that ancestral beings reside inside the rock

Mata Hari (Malay for “eye of the day”) captivated European audiences with her spiritual yet sexually charged performances

Revisiting the Myth of Mata Hari, From Sultry Spy to Government Scapegoat

One hundred years after her death, a new exhibit is putting the spotlight on the dancer’s life and legacy

The DuSable Museum was originally located in the main floor parlor of this house.

America’s Oldest Museum of Black Culture Started in a Living Room

The DuSable Museum of African American History was founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, born on this day in 1915

The Abbey Road crosswalk, which has been moved slightly since 1969, in modern times.

A Short History of the Crosswalk

Pedestrian crosswalks and roads have a complicated relationship

A foggy morning at the Lower Fall in Yellowstone National Park with the sun rising on the waterfall.

The National Park Service Is Proposing Entrance Fee Increases at Select Parks

The NPS says it need to address a maintenance backlog, and has opened the proposal up to a 30-day public comment period

This Artist Is Crowdsourcing “Singing” Sand From Around the World

Amsterdam-based artist Lotte Geeven is making sand symphonies for a public artwork debuting next spring

"MonstroCity," the outdoor section of St. Louis' City Museum

American South

A Look Inside an Iconically Quirky St. Louis Museum

A veritable playhouse of salvaged materials and crafted objects, the City Museum has entertained the young and young at heart for two decades

Take Five (2006), Tom Lamb

Trending Today

This Gallery Is Dedicated to Coal Miners’ Art

The Mining Art Gallery showcases works created by the thousands of miners who’ve lived and worked in the Great Northern Coalfield

Archaeologists excavating a new theater uncovered near Jerusalem's Western Wall

Roman Theater Uncovered Near Jerusalem’s Western Wall

Never finished or used, the small theater has been sought for more than a century by archaeologists

Cool Finds

Stone Age Britons Feasted While Building Stonehenge

A new exhibit shows that the builders gorged on animals from as far away as Scotland

A centuries-old hun luang puppet is seen in a Thailand museum. Artisans there have recently revived the style of theater using them.

After 149 Years, Thailand’s Royal Puppets Dance Again

The ancient art of Hun Luang all but vanished until passionate artisans revived the style in time for the late king’s royal funeral

A marble bust of Napoleon that has resided in Madison borough hall for 85 years has been revealed to be a long-lost artwork by revered French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

“Lost” Rodin Sculpture Discovered in New Jersey Borough Hall

It took decades for someone to notice the artist’s signature, which was facing the wall

Reaching the summit of the Matterhorn made Annie Smith Peck well-known.

Three Things to Know About Pants-Wearing Mountaineer Annie Smith Peck

Peck wasn’t wealthy and her family, who did have money, didn’t approve of her globe-trotting, mountain-climbing, pants-wearing lifestyle

Google Trekker in Quttinirpaaq National Park

Cool Finds

Now You Can Virtually Visit Quttinirpaaq National Park, One of the Most Remote Places on Earth

Google Street Views records the wonders of the northerly jewel

"Syria, Souk of Aleppo" In the Souk of Aleppo, with a Mamluk portal leading to a courtyard to the right, 2008

25 Images Capture at-Risk Heritage Sites of the Latest World Monuments Watch

The World Monuments Fund shines a light on landmarks in over 30 countries and territories that are in desperate need of conservation

Amy Sherald was the first-prize winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Sherald’s painting is currently on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, which is hosting the exhibition resulting from the Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition: “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today.”

Smithsonian Curator Talks Barack and Michelle Obama’s Official Portrait Selection

Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald will become the first black artists commissioned to paint a presidential couple for the Smithsonian

C.O.R.E Demonstration for Fair Housing, August 21, 1963. Before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a practice known as redlining limited loans to owners in minority neighborhoods which contributed to housing decay. Discrimination also prevented minorities from moving into better neighborhoods. A Department of Buildings survey in August 1963 revealed over 16,000 housing violations in a single month. Over 379 cases were turned over to the criminal court for prosecution.

The “Unlikely Historians” Who Documented America in Protest

A new exhibit showcases photos and films that have long been stowed away in a basement at New York Police Department’s headquarters

A Viking-age woven band of silk displays patterns in silver thread discovered to be Arabic script

New Research

Did Vikings Bury Their Dead in Clothing Bearing the Arabic Word for “Allah”?

While contact between Vikings and Muslim cultures is well documented, the interpretation of the 10th-century burial cloth has been called into question

Intrepid Swiss scientists sampling wastewater at a treatment plant in Zürich

Stinking Rich: Swiss Sewage Contains $1.8 Million in Gold

But don’t start digging through the country’s sewer sludge just yet

Using "visual fingerprints" in works of art, Smartify can quickly ID that painting you want to know more about

App Aims to be the “Shazam” of the Art Museum

With a database of 30 museums worldwide and growing, Smartify can use your phone camera to identify and explain works of art

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