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Museums

A marble bust of Napoleon that has resided in Madison borough hall for 85 years has been revealed to be a long-lost artwork by revered French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

“Lost” Rodin Sculpture Discovered in New Jersey Borough Hall

It took decades for someone to notice the artist’s signature, which was facing the wall

Tom Keating's forgery.

Austria

Everything in This Museum Is Fake

This Vienna art museum pays homage to the art of forgery

Using "visual fingerprints" in works of art, Smartify can quickly ID that painting you want to know more about

App Aims to be the “Shazam” of the Art Museum

With a database of 30 museums worldwide and growing, Smartify can use your phone camera to identify and explain works of art

The responsive-design website fits your phone, tablet and computer and can be used to make an itinerary for easy printout and planning.

Take a Tour of the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific Collections this Autumn

Diverse artifacts all across the Smithsonian Institution captivate and confound in equal measure

New Research

Da Vinci Had a Hand in the “Naked Mona Lisa”

A preliminary study suggests the master painter worked on the drawing called the “Mona Vanna”

Cool Finds

Degas’ Rare Sculptures Are Stuffed With Wine Corks

X-rays show the artist fleshed out his wax and clay personal projects with bits and pieces found around the studio

Jennifer Zetlan who plays Rhoda in "Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt"

Family Travel

Watch a Dinosaur Opera at New York’s American Museum of Natural History

Sink your teeth into the family friendly “Rhoda and the Fossil Hunt”

Africa’s Largest Contemporary Art Museum Opens in Cape Town

But some critics have questioned whether the institution adequately represents black African artists

Tim Renner, undersecretary of state for cultural affairs, at a 2016 press conference for the Urban National Museum for Urban Contemporary Art.

Museum Devoted to Street Art Opens in Berlin

The façade of the five-story building is covered in large murals

A VR animation of a 1945 design for a massive elevated airport over the Hudson River

New Exhibit Imagines the Buildings New York Could’ve Had

From a gigantic airport, to an urbanized Ellis Island, the show reveals the many fascinating ideas for New York City that never made it off the page

Inside the Rainbow Tunnel.

Family Travel

Follow This Rainbow Tunnel to the World’s Largest Collection of Fluorescent Rocks

Get glowing in the Sterling Hill Mining Museum

Farhad Moshiri, Yipeeee, 2009, private collection, London

Farhad Moshiri, Dubbed ‘the Middle East’s Andy Warhol,’ Gets First Major U.S. Exhibition

A selection of the pop artist’s significant works will be displayed, fittingly, at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh

Garfield Elementary's award-winning drumline performs with the cheerleading squad in celebration of the Anacostia Community Museum's 50th anniversary.

How This Washington, D.C. Museum Redefined What Museums Could Be

Fifty years after its founding, the Smithsonian’s beloved Anacostia Community Museum continues to tell stories heard nowhere else

An Enigma machine used during World War II to send coded messages

Family Travel

More Than 5,000 Objects of Espionage Are Coming to the Spy Museum

The trove of cool artifacts comes from the world’s largest private collection of spycraft

Gokstad ship at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo

Seven Must-See Museums in Norway

Each institution celebrates a different aspect of this Scandinavian country’s history

A Minecraft rendering of the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C. Participants in Minecraft: Education Edition online festivities will be able to let their own imaginations run wild this Museum Day.

Family Travel

Fans of Minecraft Are Sure to Dig this Nationwide Museum Fest

The indie hit is the perfect game for a day devoted to unearthing knowledge

The room where Abraham Lincoln died in the Petersen House

House Where Lincoln Died to Close for Renovations

The Petersen House, across the street from Ford’s Theatre, will undergo preservation work to keep it as a museum of the president’s final moments

A rendering of the Survivor Stories theatre.

Cultural Travel

12 Must-See Fall Exhibits Around the World

Art, science and magic draws us to museums this fall

The new Palestinian Museum in the West Bank's Birzeit

Palestinian Museum’s First Exhibit Opens

In four sections, ‘Jerusalem Lives’ uses a variety of mediums to look at Jerusalem’s history, political status and daily life

A painting of Claude Monet's wife and son by friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir that he owned

The Art Monet Owned

A new exhibit looks inside the mind of this influential Impressionist through the lens of the works he collected

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