News
Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art Could Close This Week Because of Government Shutdown [UPDATED]
Many cultural institutions may be forced to close or scale back their operations if the government shutdown continues beyond Monday.
Smithsonian Institution
Art
Go Behind the Scenes of 9 Museums With These Great Online Web Series
These nine museums are using online video series to take viewers behind the scenes of their collections.
In Brief
Two Nooses Discovered at Smithsonian Museums This Week
"Today's incident is a painful reminder of the challenges that African Americans continue to face," said NMAAHC Founding Director Lonnie Bunch.
Art
How a Smithsonian Naturalist’s Skeleton Ended Up on View at the Museum
The skeleton of 19th-century collector Robert Kennicott is on view in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History's Objects of Wonder. The bones recently solved the long mystery of his death.
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.
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.