News
Playlists of Protest Music and Endangered Languages on New Smithsonian Folkways Site
Online visitors can now access and navigate decades of folk recordings from around the world more easily.
Smithsonian Institution
Art
Explore a Growing Archive of American Gardens with a New Smithsonian App
Smithsonian Gardens launched a free app to share and collect American gardening stories, from 19th-century Detroit potato patches to community greenspaces in vacant lots.
Art
An Exhibition Offers a Visual Biography of Sylvia Plath, Including Her Little-Known Art
The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is opening a visual biography of the author Sylvia Plath, including her rarely-seen artwork.
Art
When Painter Clyfford Still Sent Rubber Underpants to a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Female Art Critic
In 1952, years before she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, art critic Emily Genauer received a pair of rubber underpants in the mail — the kind of underpants babies wore before the advent of disposable diapers.
Art
The Heart of the Great Plains in 1970s Black and White
WASHINGTON, DC — Kansas is characterized as much by its skies as its ground, with clouds sweeping over the fields and towns that dot the heart of the Great Plains.
Art
A Smithsonian Pop-up Show Finds Common Ground in Our Eclectic Stories
WASHINGTON, DC — I had a moment of hesitation when walking into the CrossLines exhibition, particularly when I saw the subtitle, “A Culture Lab on Intersectionality,” and the blurb that further claimed that “40+ artists and scholars explore race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and dis
Books
See the Smithsonian Archive's Collection of Artists' Handwritten Letters
Whatever skeptics may say about the pseudoscience of graphology (handwriting analysis), it’s hard to deny that handwriting expresses feeling and style — especially, in many cases, when it’s the handwriting of an artist. Georgia O’Keeffe’s bold, squiggly lines and lack of punctuation ignored conventi
Art
Airships and Reanimated Corpses from the Pages of Early Science Fiction
WASHINGTON, DC — Science fiction rose to prominence in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when authors like H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley imagined the extraordinary possibilities of advances in technology and exploration.
News
Despite Protests, Paris Auction of Sacred Native American Objects Goes Ahead
Despite calls for a halt from US government officials and tribal leaders, EVE (Estimations Ventes aux Enchères) auction house went forward yesterday at Drouot Richelieu in Paris with a sale that included contested indigenous sacred objects and human remains.
News
Smithsonian Doubles Its Bill Traylor Holdings Ahead of 2018 Retrospective
Bill Traylor's drawings and paintings were not recognized by the art world until decades after his death in 1949.
Art
A Cherokee Artist Wrestling with Grief, Colonialism, and False Dichotomies
WASHINGTON, DC — Kay WalkingStick has devoted herself to breaking down perceived dichotomies.
Art
The Inca Rope Bridge That's Woven Across a River Each Year
WASHINGTON, DC — Each June in Huinchiri, Peru, four Quechua communities on two sides of a gorge join together to build a bridge out of grass, creating a form of ancient infrastructure that dates back at least five centuries to the Inca Empire.