Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Museums

The original 3,000-year-old lion sculpture was destroyed during the razing of Baghdad's Mosul Museum

Lion of Mosul Statue Brought Back Through 3-D Printed Replica

The resurrected sculpture is featured in the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Culture Under Attack’ exhibition

This brain is just one of many making up the Indiana Medical History Museum's extensive collection.

The Future of Mental Health

How One Museum Is Giving a Voice to Former Mental Health Patients

The Indiana Medical History Museum is telling the human stories behind its collection of brains, tumors and other biological remains

The hand-tooled leather cover

A Bible Owned by Lincoln, Unknown to Historians for 150 Years, Goes on Display

The relic offers a new opportunity to reflect on Lincoln’s religious beliefs

Inside Poster House

The U.S. Is Now Home to Its First Poster Museum

Poster House, which just launched in New York, seeks to ‘cover posters from all over the world and time periods,’ its director says

Still from Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass

The Louvre’s First VR Experience Lets Visitors Get Close to the ‘Mona Lisa’

The project will be featured in a major da Vinci exhibition dropping in October

Trending Today

The Penn Museum Just Floated a 12-Ton Sphinx Out a Window

Using air-dollies, the museum moved the largest sphinx in the western hemisphere 250 feet to a new entranceway

Wayne Thiebaud's "Jawbreaker Machine" (1963) is just one of the nine artworks reimagined as mini golf holes at "Art Course," an interactive exhibition at The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

This Summer, Play Nine Holes at This ‘Art Course’ in Kansas City

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art takes inspiration from its vast collection to create an art-inspired mini golf course

This is not King Leopold II.

Cool Finds

Museumgoer Spots a Misidentified Portrait of Rodin

A Spanish graphic designer recognized his art hero in a portrait at Madrid’s Lázaro Galdiano museum labeled as the notorious King Leopold II of Belgium

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the order of the day: "Full victory—nothing else" to paratroopers in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe.

Eleven Museums and Memorials Honoring the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

These events and exhibits shed light on the experiences of soldiers during the invasion of Normandy and the remainder of World War II

Watch Rare Footage of a Smiling, Sunglass-Wearing Queen Victoria

The remarkably clear 1900 film was found in the MoMA archives

The Statue of Liberty and the new museum building on Liberty Island as seen from the approach by ferry.

The Americans Who Saw Lady Liberty as a False Idol of Broken Promises

Suffragists, African-Americans and Chinese immigrants all criticized the statue as representative of a nation that was not yet free for everyone

The shift will be funded by a $10 million donation from MOCA's Board of Trustees president, Carolyn Powers

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles Will Soon Offer Free Admission

The move will be funded by a $10 million donation

Ruby Taboh's stilton cheese.

Cool Finds

Cheese Made From Celebrity Belly Button and Armpit Bacteria Goes on Display

Five types of “human cheese” from cheddar to Cheshire are on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Crocker's Car heads to Promontory Summit in 1869. The car shuttled railroad president Leland Stanford from Sacramento to officially complete the transcontinental railroad, and probably also carried the iconic Golden Spike to the ceremony.

The Last Remaining Rail Car That ‘Witnessed’ the Transcontinental Railroad’s Momentous Day

‘Crocker’s Car’ brought the tycoon Leland Stanford to connect the East Coast to the West in 1869

The museum worked with San Francisco ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners to feed hundreds of news interviews, quotes from Dalí's autobiography and other written works, and archival video footage into an artificial intelligence system to recreate the artist.

With a Little Help From A.I., the Dali Museum Brings the Famed Surrealist to Life

Visitors to the museum in St. Petersburg, Florida can meet Salvador Dalí “in person”

Here’s What Al Capone’s Philadelphia Prison Cell Really Looked Like

The mob boss spent nine months imprisoned at Eastern State Penitentiary, and a new exhibition shows his stay was less glamorous than it was portrayed

Tony Cragg is just one of the many celebrated artists whose work can be viewed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England.

Six of the World’s Most Spectacular Sculpture Parks

From New York to Norway, these galleries without walls all debut new exhibitions this spring and summer

The Awakening, February 20, 1915 Chromolithograph

Nine Women’s History Exhibits to See This Year

Museums around the country are celebrating how the contributions of remarkable women changed everything from human rights to mariachi music

Cool Finds

Historians Are Looking for Images of the HMS Beagle’s Anchors

Researchers are hoping to confirm that they have discovered an anchor from the ship that carried Darwin stuck in the mud of an Australian river

Colorized photographs bring a 21st-century approach to the 19th-century technology that changed how Americans understood war.

A New Civil War Museum Speaks Truths in the Former Capital of the Confederacy

Against the odds, historian Christy Coleman merged two Richmond institutions, forging a new approach to reconciling with the nation’s bloody past

Page 56 of 89