Art & Artists

Confederate Prisoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta by Kara Walker, 2005, from the portfolio Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

How Kara Walker Boldly Rewrote Civil War History

The artist gives 150-year-old illustrations a provocative update at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Rick Araluce's The Final Stop, installed at the Renwick Gallery, is a world unto itself.

At This Spectral Subway Platform, Trains Approach But Never Arrive

An otherworldly art installation debuts at the Renwick just in time for Halloween

FIU Blackboards by Joseph Beuys,1977-1979, now on view at the Hirshhorn.

What a Pair of Empty Blackboards Can Teach Us About Art and Social Change

Can art alter the course of history? Should artists even try? Joseph Beuys said yes and yes

The box set will include a 300-page companion volume featuring never-before-seen photographs, scholarly commentary and rigorous liner notes.

This Ambitious Landmark Hip-Hop and Rap Anthology Was Successfully Funded

Smithsonian's nonprofit record label launched a Kickstarter for help and got it

Three-Room Dwelling (detail) by Frances Glessner Lee, about 1944-46

Home Is Where the Corpse Is—at Least in These Dollhouse Crime Scenes

Frances Glessner Lee's "Nutshell Studies" exemplify the intersection of forensic science and craft

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

Cat's Head, 30 BCE to third century CE

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

Why the Ancient Egyptians Loved Their Kitties

A show opening at the Sackler dramatizes the various meanings that the people of Egypt once associated with cats

A bust of the legless "bicycle girl" zombie executed by Rick Grimes in the Walking Dead pilot.

America's Undead Are Immortalized at the Smithsonian

The cast of "The Walking Dead" donates a set of perfectly macabre Halloween gifts

A rhino sculpture made from wara (rice straw) from the 2017 Wara Art Festival.

Check Out These Massive Straw Art Sculptures on Japan's Honshu Island

Art students are giving leftover rice wara a second life

The installation Terminal allows visitors to walk through the work, between the spires and beneath the canopy that connects them.

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

Get Lost Inside These Golden Spires Transforming the Sackler Pavilion

<em>Terminal,</em>the work of acclaimed artist Subodh Gupta, recalls an urban cityscape

Mike deRoos and Michi Main rebuild skeletons of marine mammals for their company Cetacea. Here, deRoos adjusts a blue whale chevron bone placement.

Art Meets Science

How to Give Dead Animals a Second Life: The Art of Skeleton Articulation

Mike deRoos and Michi Main build beautiful models from the remains of Pacific sea creatures

In the late Bronze Age, ca. 500-450 BCE, bells were made in sets that rang different notes according to size.

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

A Rare Collection of Bronze Age Chinese Bells Tells a Story of Ancient Innovation

These rarely played ancient bells are newly analyzed with their acoustics remastered and digitized for a new exhibition at the Sackler Gallery

Two celestial beings, China, Kucha, Kizil, Cave 224 or 205, 6th century CE

Freer|Sackler: Reopens

New Sackler Buddhist Exhibition Doubles the Immersive Experiences

Film of Sri Lankan site joins popular shrine room as part of three-year exhibition and we finally learn why one Buddha’s hair is blue

The Dance Class, c. 1873. Oil on canvas.

One Hundred Years Later, the Tense Realism of Edgar Degas Still Captivates

For this groundbreaking artist, greatness was always one more horizon away

The 18-month restoration of Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, the Lansdowne (above: the portrait before conservation treatment is on the left) is completed.

A Rainbow Shines Anew in National Portrait Gallery's Iconic George Washington Portrait 

A glistening Lansdowne Portrait refresh harkens the reopening of "America's Presidents"

Kim Gordon

The Summer of Yoko Ono Ends with Shrieks and Screams

A concert, a broken vase and unfettered adoration for the avant-guard artist marks the Hirshhorn’s finale to its appreciation

A Panel from the Marvel Comics series ‘The 'Nam.’

How Comics Captured America’s Opinions About the Vietnam War

More than any other medium, comics closely followed the narrative arc of the conflict, from support to growing ambivalence

Capoeira roda in the Arts and Industries Building at the 2017 Folklife Festival.

How Brazilian Capoeira Evolved From a Martial Art to an International Dance Craze

The athletic movements may have inspired modern break dancing

In the dress (now in the Smithsonian collections), on September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King crushed Bobby Riggs with her serve and volley game, winning the match 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

How Billie Jean King Picked Her Outfit for the Battle of the Sexes Match

King beat self-proclaimed male chauvinist Bobby Riggs and her victory still stands as an accomplishment for feminism

“I felt strongly that it was cotton that killed Emmett Till,” says photographer Andrew Lichtenstein.

New Book of Photographs Recalls the Trauma of American History

Looking back at a lynching that shocked America and galvanized the civil rights movement

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