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Museums

Heritage scientist Cecilia Bembibre captures the smell of a 18th-century bible at Knole House.

New Research

The Quest to Better Describe the Scent of Old Books

Describing a unique smell just got easier thanks to a pair of olfactory detectives

Jack Kerouac's former home at 5169 10th Ave. N in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Fans Hope to Preserve Jack Kerouac’s Florida Home

The modest house in St. Petersburg is now for sale, and may be turned into a museum

A permanent exhibition at Micropia in Amsterdam, the world’s only museum dedicated to microbes, called “A Fungal Future” showcases an array of everyday objects made from fungi.

Art Meets Science

Is Fungus the Material of the Future?

Scientists in the Netherlands have found a way to make slippers and other household objects using fungi

Though the pictured fish belong to a German research collection, they represent similar samples around the world that have come under attack.

Trending Today

The Campaign Is On to Save the Natural History Collections of a Louisiana University

The school is displacing millions of specimens in favor of a new track

Christo's "Floating Piers" racked up 1.2 million visitors in just over two weeks.

Cool Finds

What Kind of Art is the Most Popular?

It’s not always in museums—and historic name recognition is starting to matter less

Museum Devoted to Camille Claudel, Long Overshadowed by Rodin, Opens in France

Her work has long been obscured by her dramatic personal life

A new website features 100 years of Japanese animation.

Cool Finds

New Website Documents 100 Years of Japanese Animation

From propaganda to experimental cartoons, these films showcase the early days of a national art form

President Herbert Hoover (center right) plays a rousing game of Hooverball on the South Lawn of the White House.

Cool Finds

Newly Discovered Color Movies Show Herbert Hoover’s Softer Side

From Hooverball to White House frolics, you’ve never seen the staid president quite like this

The 4D theater tells the story of the Battle of Yorktown.

Telling the Forgotten Stories of the Everyday Americans of the Revolutionary War

Near where the Battle of Yorktown was waged, a new museum fuses innovative technology with storytelling techniques to connect with visitors

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Find Your 2,000-Year-Old Doppelgänger

Send the Musée de la Civilisation a photo, and it will match you with an ancient statue

The future Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum and Literary Centre.

L.M. Montgomery’s Ontario Home Will Open As a Museum

While living in the village of Norval, the beloved author enjoyed stunning literary success. But this chapter of her life was tinged with darkness

King Tut captivated the U.S. in 1976, thanks in part to an NEH grant.

Trending Today

Five Things You Didn’t Realize Were Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Since 1965, the agency has bestowed more than 63,000 humanities-related grants

American South

This Virginia Winery Once Housed One of WWII’s Most Important Spy Stations

Speakeasies are so 2012—this place has actual secrets

A reproduction of the "Tower of Blue Horses," which hasn't been spotted since the late 1940s.

Cool Finds

Two New Exhibitions Celebrate a Long-Lost Painting

The “Tower of the Blue Horses” is gone, but not forgotten

California’s Bunny Museum Hops to a New Home

The previous location could not contain the museum’s 33,000 “artifacts”

The Featured Works display at the American Writers Museum in Chicago.

America’s First Writers Museum Is Slated to Open in May

A new home for celebrating American literary titans, titles and traditions takes root in Chicago

Frescoes inside the Brömserhof, the building where Siegfried's Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum is housed.

Europe

This Medieval Knight’s Manor Houses Over 350 Mechanical Musical Instruments

From tiny music boxes to the bus-sized Orchestrion, Siegfried’s Mechanical Music Cabinet in Germany’s Rhineland is the perfect musical detour

Patrick O'Brien, "Dinosaur and Volkswagen," Gigantic, 1998, oil on canvas - How big is “gigantic?” Patrick O'Brien shares his life-long fascination with the illustrations of prehistoric animals in children's books with a new generation of young readers. Other images in Gigantic compare dinosaurs with modern devices such as monster trucks, cherry pickers and tanks. O’Brien lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Art Meets Science

A New Exhibition Explores the Science and Math in Children’s Book Illustrations

The 29 artworks on display capture the wonder in nature, engineering and discoveries

Statuary inside the salt cathedral.

Step Inside This Underground Cathedral, Carved Into the Walls of an Abandoned Salt Mine

An old mine has transformed into a subterranean worship space, 650 feet underground

The beauty of this mutant strain of the fungus Trichoderma reesei belies the organism’s potential for dismantling biomass.

Art Meets Science

Scientists Make Art From Objects Invisible to the Naked Eye

Sophisticated microscopes, satellites and other instruments can create stunning images in experts’ hands

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