Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Artists

The Boule & Bill comic by Jean Roba

Europe

How Brussels Became a Real-Life Comic Strip

The city’s colorful murals put it in the running for comic book capital of the world

In the installation of Smell, The Beauty of Decay: SmellScape Central Park, designed by Sissel Tolaas, visitors touch the wall that has been painted with the special paint, releasing the scent.

Can Smell Be a Work of Art?

Scent artist Sissel Tolaas uses chemistry to explore the malodorous, yet beautiful, scent of decay in Central Park

To Mapplethorpe, flowers offered a way to broaden his appeal. Parrot Tulips, 1988

Robert Mapplethorpe Could Make Even Tulips Erotic

LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum will be showcasing the photographer’s lesser known flower portraits

2015 Champion and People's Choice

Family Travel

Learn the Secrets of the World’s Best Snow Sculptors

On the shores of Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva, teams of snow carvers turn chilly columns into masterpieces

George Washington seems to be crying as he stares at FDR.

American South

How 43 Giant, Crumbling Presidential Heads Ended Up in a Virginia Field

After an ambitious monument went bust, big dreams—and big heads—remain

People crowd on road near Balogun Market to shop. Lagos, Nigeria

Step Into a Noisy, Chaotic Nigerian Marketplace at The African Art Museum

West African artist Emeka Ogboh’s installation will be the first time the museum has featured a work of sound art

A newly-released poster in NASA's Visions of the Future series heralds a future "grand tour" using gravity assists.

Cool Finds

NASA Went Retro With Their New Space Travel Posters

Travel to the world of tomorrow—today!

Michelangelo painted some of art history's greatest hands.

New Research

Michelangelo May Have Had Arthritis

Researchers used old portraits and letters to study the master’s hands

Liliya Lifánova, Anatomy is Destiny (live performance at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis), 2012.

Cool Finds

Board of Sexism in Chess? Check Out These New Exhibitions

The World Chess Hall of Fame is showcasing the power of its women

Statue of Liberty stamp art, 1994, by Tom Engerman

Get Stuck on New York’s Pop Culture With These Historic Stamps

A new exhibition at the National Postal Museum spotlights Gotham’s cultural impact

A life-sized Helicoprion head, created by sculptor Gary Staab, seems to burst through the wall at the Idaho Museum of Natural History as part of the buzz shark exhibit.

Art Meets Science

The Prehistoric Buzz Shark Has a Modern-Day Hero in Artist Ray Troll

How an Alaska-based artist helped solve a mystery that baffled paleontologists for over a century

Cool Finds

Step Inside a Dalí Painting at This Virtual Reality Exhibit

Surrealism meets real life in an exploration of a Dalí masterwork

Are you a global citizen? Then you might need one of these.

Cool Finds

You Can Get an Antarctic Passport

Pledge your loyalty to the southernmost continent—and to the ideals of peace, equality and sustainability

"Love Letter Brooklyn" was first installed in 2011.

Trending Today

One of the Most Popular Pieces of Street Art in Brooklyn Is Coming Down

“Love Letter Brooklyn” will soon be gone forever

Ai Weiwei
Chinese 1957–
Forever Bicycles, 2011, installation view at Taipei Fine Arts Museum
© Ai Weiwei

Is Ai Weiwei the Andy Warhol of Our Time?

A new exhibition in Melbourne delves into the connections between the artists who define their generations

A work by Pavel Ilie at the Romania Postmodernism Museum's "Before & After" exhibition.

Cool Finds

This Postmodern Art Captures a Tiny Moment of Hope During Romania’s Communist Years

Learn about Romania’s “unfrozen years” at Bucharest’s Postmodernism Museum

Our Changing Seas III, 2014

Art Meets Science

Does This Sculpture Depict a Coral Reef Collapsing or Recovering?

Artist Courtney Mattison’s spiral-shaped piece explores the uncertain future for coral reefs

Women Who Shaped History

How Frida Kahlo’s Love Letter Shaped Romance for Punk Poet Patti Smith

Sealed with a kiss, the 1940 note reflects the “earthly human love” between Kahlo and fellow artist Diego Rivera

Femme au beret orange et au col 
de fourrure (Marie Thérèse), by Pablo Picasso, 1937

New Exhibition Featuring Picasso, O’Keeffe, Hopper and Many Others Brings Modernism Into Focus

The artistic risk and adventure of 20th-century modernism is explored at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Ellsworth Kelly, "Red Yellow Blue V," 1968

Why Ellsworth Kelly Was a Giant in the World of American Art

The artist’s minimalism put the essence of his subjects above all

Page 66 of 117