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Fine Arts

The "Queer Threads" exhibition, which ran in early 2014, examined the diversity of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer experiences.

Urban Explorations

What it Took to Create the World’s First Gay Art Museum

Charles Leslie’s passionate half-century of homoerotic art collecting offers a mirror for the history of gay history itself

Cool Finds

This Art Studio Nurtures Talent in People on the Autism Spectrum

New York City’s Pure Visions Arts provides an art and exhibition space for around 40 creative people with autism

Trending Today

Someone Walked Off With a Picasso From a Miami Beach Art Festival

An $85,000 silver plate went missing late last week

Playing an Instrument Won’t Make Your Kid Smarter

Music can, however, boost children’s creativity and teach them important life skills such as discipline and concentration—but so can other hobbies

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Doug Aitken is Redefining How We Experience Art

The artist uses video, music, mirrors, railroad cars, even entire buildings to create works that make every viewer a participant

Resurrection Bay, Alaska (1939), by Rockwell Kent

Art Meets Science

Art Chronicles Glaciers As They Disappear

The Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington, is exhibiting 75 works of art pulled from the past two centuries—all themed around ice

The Peacock Room Comes to America: Exhibiting Freer’s Bibles

The Man Who Viewed the Bible as Art

The Washington Codex, now on display at the Freer gallery, became one of the earliest chapters in Charles Freer’s appreciation of beauty and aesthetics

Fishing net at Alaska’s Gore Point

Art Meets Science

Artists Join Scientists on an Expedition to Collect Marine Debris

Now, they are creating beautiful works from the trash they gathered on the 450-nautical-mile journey in the Gulf of Alaska

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill by Yousuf Karsh, 1941

The Day Winston Churchill Lost His Cigar

Thanks to a gift of over 100 photographs, the National Portrait Gallery celebrates Yousuf Karsh’s iconic photography with an installation of 27 portraits

Franz Marc’s Horses in a Landscape was one of the recovered pieces of art.

A Trove of Art, Recovered Decades After Nazis Stole It, Is Going On Virtual Display

After more than 70 years, these great works of art are starting to go online

Tufa Dinku studies how satellites can be used to measure rain and temperature and other things relevant to understanding the climate.

This “Climate Models” Calendar Wants You to Check Out These Model Scientists—And Their Work

These climate scientists had some fun posing n landscapes representing their very serious work

Blue, Australian Kelpie, Age 19

This Photographer Captures the Beauty And Dignity of Elderly Animals

Photographer Isa Leshko says the project originally began as a form of self-therapy, but it evolved into a traveling photography exhibition

A poster for the Degenerate Art exhibit that ran in Munich’s Residenz in 1937

A Billion Dollars of Modernist Art, Stolen by Nazis, Was Just Recovered in Munich

As many as 1,500 pieces of modernist art were just found in a Munich apartment

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This Eagle Statue Is One of the Greatest Romano-British Artworks Ever Discovered

Archeologists in London just turned up a pristine 1,800-year old Roman statue of an eagle devouring a serpent

Horseshoe crab

Animal Specimens, From Fish to Birds to Mammals, Get Inked

Inspired by Japanese fish rubbings, two University of Texas biologists make spectacular prints of a variety of species at different stages of decay

(Not the temple in question)

Ancient Buddhist Frescoes in China Got Painted Over with Cartoons

he temple affairs head and the the cultural heritage monitoring team lead have both lost their jobs, and the Communist party chief has been scolded

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Why We Missed America’s National Treasures During the Shutdown

The Smithsonian’s Richard Kurin reflects on the recent shutdown and the icons that have shaped American history

East face of the Smithsonian Castle on July 4, 2010

Smithsonian Museums and the Panda Cam are Back in Business Today

After the 16-day government shutdown, visitors can once again visit the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo relaunches the panda cam

You might be curious, is this something macroscopic or microscopic? It’s actually the wing of a green darner dragonfly, as seen through a scanning electron microscope.

Macro or Micro? Test Your Sense of Scale

A geographer and a biologist at Salem State University team up to curate a new exhibition, featuring confounding views from both satellites and microscopes

5 Smithsonian Scientific Research Projects Shut Down by the Shutdown

The federal government shutdown has affected astronomy, paleontology fieldwork and research into animal behavior at the Smithsonian

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