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Museums

The inherent flexibility and adaptability of the Shotgun Chameleon House in Houston grew from designer Zui Ng’s desire to create an economically and environmentally sustainable house. The exterior staircase serves as a separate entrance for potential renters.

What the Housing Market in America Needs Is More Options

From granny pods to morphing apartments, the future of shelter is evolving

A phoenix rising from the ashes in a 13th-century bestiary

Family Travel

Rare Magical Manuscripts Go on Display at the British Library

The exhibition, which will also travel to New York, explores the history of magic to mark the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter

The Magritte Museum in Belgium contained the final piece of the Magritte puzzle.

Cool Finds

Final Piece of Hidden Magritte Masterpiece Found

X-rays have revealed the last bit of “La Pose Enchantee,” which the artist cut up and reused in the early 1930s

“For 20 years, everyone referred to The Dinner Party as ... ‘vaginas on plates,’” Chicago says. “Nobody called it the history of women in western civilization, which of course, is what it is.”

These Fall Exhibitions Explore the Origins of Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”

Brooklyn Museum and National Museum of Women in the Arts revisit the artist’s celebration of unrecognized women, female body

The museum has more than 600 Bibles in different languages and dialects in its collection.

Can the Museum of the Bible Deliver on Its Promise?

The highly anticipated museum hopes to offer something for visitors of all faiths, but on a topic as fraught as religion, that may not be possible

A sneak peak inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Five Things To Know About the New Louvre Abu Dhabi

It boasts an impressive rooftop, 55 buildings and a collection of more than 600 artworks—but it has been mired in controversy from the start

The exhibition "Sports: Leveling the Playing Field" highlights the achievements of African American athletes on both national and international stages.

Lonnie Bunch Looks Back on the Making of the Smithsonian’s Newest Museum

The director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture reflects on what it took to make a dream reality

Vincent van Gogh. The Postman (Joseph-Étienne Roulin), 1889. Oil on canvas.

Cool Finds

Barnes Foundation Launches Digital Gallery of Its Amazing Art Collection

Historically infamous for being inaccessible to the public, the foundation has now published images of almost half of its collection online

Little Children on a Bicycle

How Instagram Is Changing the Way We Design Cultural Spaces

As neighborhoods, restaurants and museums become more photogenic, are we experiencing an “Instagramization” of the world?

Sleek new entranceways will grace the refurbished museum.

Here’s Why Washington’s Beloved Air and Space Museum Is Facing a Sweeping Seven-Year Upgrade

The museum will remain open as it works to enhance the visitor’s experience

Chair Illusion

Austria

Inside the Mind-Bending World of the Museum of Illusions

Perception or reality? This museum in Vienna, Austria, may cause you to do a double take

Johannes Vermeer, "Woman with a Pearl Necklace," c. 1662-65

Envisioning Vermeer, Master of Genre Painting, at the National Gallery of Art

Exhibition explores the Dutch artist’s connections with his contemporaries

Adelbert Ames

Commentary

Is it Time We Built a Museum of the History of American History?

A better understanding of how we interpret our past, and what and who we choose to remember, would go a long way to healing our nation’s wounds

Jitish Kallat's "Circadian Rhyme 1" addresses heightened security measures

What Does Post-9/11 Art Mean? Imperial War Museum Explores the Question in ‘Age of Terror’

Works by Ai Weiwei, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Coco Fusco respond to contemporary violence and conflict

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

Cool Finds

Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots Found Hidden Beneath Another Painting

The politically dangerous work was painted over by Adrian Vanson two year after the queen’s execution

The British Museum was the first free, public natural history museum in the world—but its creator, Hans Sloane, was intricately connected with the slave trade.

The British Museum Was a Wonder of Its Time—But Also a Product of Slavery

A new book explores the little-known life and career of Hans Sloane, whose collections led to the founding of the British Museum

"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

Highlighting the breadth of the collection, the exterior of the museum was draped with images of the artworks in the Freer and Sackler Galleries, including Whistler’s famed Peacock Room

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

Here’s What It Takes to Turn a Museum into a Movie Screen

To mark the reopening of the Freer Gallery, the façade of the newly renovated museum made its cinematic debut

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