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Art

Researchers have discovered a hidden painting beneath Picasso's Still Life (1922).

Cool Finds

Abandoned Artwork Discovered Beneath Pablo Picasso Painting

The artist, who regularly reused canvases, covered a neoclassical still life with a Cubist one

Frans Snyders' Fruit Stall features a vast spread of produce from the 17th century.

Art Meets Science

Centuries-Old Paintings Help Researchers Track Food Evolution

Art inadvertently documents the domestication of carrots, wheat, watermelon and other culinary delights

The Renaissance artist died in 1520 at age 37.

New Research Suggests Bloodletting, Pneumonia Killed Raphael

The artist failed to disclose his late-night outings to physicians, leading them to misdiagnose his illness

Doritos are cake.

Why It’s Unsettling That Anything Could Be Cake, According to Science

Psychologists explain why the disconnect between expectations and reality is both amusing and uncomfortable

Socrates Sculpture Park is located in Queens—New York's most diverse borough, and also the hardest hit by COVID-19.

Covid-19

Are Sculpture Parks Having a Moment in the Sun?

Many art museums are still closed due to COVID-19, but open gardens and parks on their grounds are attracting eager visitors

The violin-shaped artifacts lack signs of wear associated with use as tools or weapons.

Cool Finds

Do These 10,000-Year-Old Flint Artifacts Depict Human Figures?

Archaeologists say the objects’ grooves evoke the hips and the narrowing of the neck around the shoulders

Quantum physicist Amruta Gadge became the first to create a Bose-Einstein Condensate—the exotic, elusive fifth state of matter—remotely.

Covid-19

Five Scientific Achievements That Happened During Coronavirus Lockdown

Quarantine did not stop these innovators from discovering new species, creating the elusive fifth state of matter remotely, and more

Archaeologists discovered rock art engraved inside this 4,000-year-old stone monument in northern Israel. Illustrations highlight the herd of horned animal figures etched into the boulder.

Cool Finds

Millennia-Old Rock Art in Israel Offers Window Into Lost Culture

The carvings depict animals, geometric designs and what may be a human face

Coming Home, a 1947 painting purportedly by Gertrude Abercrombie, is one of the works now suspected to be a forgery.

FBI Raids Northern Michigan Home Linked to Suspected Art Forgery Ring

Paintings formerly attributed to Gertrude Abercrombie, Ralston Crawford and George Ault are now thought to be fakes

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red: Target, 1992

National Gallery of Art Acquires Its First Painting by a Native American Artist

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s work addresses questions of identity and appropriation

Nancy Baker Cahill's Liberty Bell, as seen over the National Mall

This AR Artwork Reimagines Historical Spaces Across the U.S.

Nancy Baker Cahill’s red, white and blue “Liberty Bell” rings over sites in six major cities

The global health pandemic has challenged the most visited museum in the world to draft new visitor guidelines that meet health and safety requirements.

Covid-19

How the Pandemic Is Giving the Louvre Back to Parisians

With a steep drop in international tourists and new COVID-19 safety measures in place, the most visited museum in the world reopened yesterday

A black musician seen in Piero di Cosimo's Perseus Frees Andromeda, 1510-1515

How the Uffizi Gallery Is Highlighting Black Figures in Renaissance Art

Each Saturday, the Florentine museum will release a new educational video on TikTok and Facebook

Frida Kahlo, circa 1950

Why Scholars Are Skeptical of Claimed Rediscovery of Lost Frida Kahlo Masterpiece

“The Wounded Table,” a 1940 work by the Mexican painter, disappeared 65 years ago

Nina Chanel Abney, Untitled, 2019. Installation view, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2019.

Eight Online Exhibits to See Right Now on Black History, Racism and Protest

Educating yourself with these shows is one more way to understand the current moment

The frame is the "mother holding its child,” says the Smithsonian's Martin Kotler. Many frames are works of art in their own right—and deserve to be seen as such.

Is It Time to Recognize Frames as an Independent Art Form?

In a fairly new field, the picture frame may finally be coming into its own

Love is the Message, The Message is Death,by Arthur Jafa
, film still, 2016

Now for the First Time, Arthur Jafa’s ‘Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death’ Streams Online

The seminal work, a contemporary Guernica, is the first joint acquisition for the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian American Art Museum

The "restored" painting may be a copy of this 17th-century work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Botched Art Restoration Renders Virgin Mary Unrecognizable

The failed makeover—one of several to surface in Spain in recent years—has prompted calls for stricter regulation of the field

John Everett Millais, The Bridesmaid, 1851

Covid-19

U.K. Museum Reimagines Classic Art With Face Masks

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has released greeting cards of six paintings adapted for this “most unusual year”

Fatherhood can appear in a myriad of ways in art; one constant is love.

Fourteen Works of Art Portray the Bonds of Fatherhood Across Time and Culture

Celebrate Father’s Day with works pulled from the Smithsonian collections

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