Art & Artists

Langston Hughes powerfully speaks for those excluded.

Breaking Ground

What Langston Hughes’ Powerful Poem “I, Too" Tells Us About America's Past and Present

Smithsonian historian David Ward reflects on the work of Langston Hughes

Will Knight of Knight's Spider Web Farm in Vermont

This Farm Harvests Spider Webs for Art

Knight's Spider Web Farm is Vermont’s original "web site"

Adrien Broom photographed a luminous dress in Wentworth Woodhouse, the largest private home in Britain. This image is titled The Forest of Columns.

Photographer Adrien Broom Sheds Light on Old Structures in Her Work

An eerie vision of the luminous magic we find in ourselves

Resurrection City Mural (detail), 1968

Breaking Ground

A Mural on View in the African American History Museum Recalls the Rise of Resurrection City

The 1968 Hunger Wall is a stark reminder of the days when the country's impoverished built a shantytown on the National Mall

The Mechelse Wyandotte, the latest iteration of Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Project

Art Meets Science

Breeding a Better Chicken in the Name of Art (and Science)

For 20 years, Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has been selectively breeding chickens for his Cosmopolitan Chicken Project

Pablo Picasso by Albert Eugene Gallatin, 1934

Commentary

Why It Takes a Great Rivalry to Produce Great Art

Smithsonian historian David Ward takes a look at a new book by Sebastian Smee on the contentious games artists play

Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten, Noble Black Women: The Harlem Renaissance and After,1935, printed 1983

These Rarely Seen Photographs Are a Who's Who of the Harlem Renaissance

Carl Van Vechten captured and archived images of most of the era’s great artists, musicians and thought leaders

The Next Rembrandt 2

Has the Incredible Accuracy of Art Reproduction Ruined the Way We Experience Masterpieces?

Precise digital replicas allow more people to own and view great works of art, minus their soul

Reynolda House Museum of American Art

These Five Museums Put the “Culture” in “Agriculture”

It's a lot more than just "tractor art"

Sarah Vaughan by Herman Leonard, 1949

Jazz Has Never Looked Cooler Than It Does in This New Exhibition

These evocative images by photographer Herman Leonard call to mind a bygone era

“Enneagon” features repeating crystalline-like shapes. “You think you understand a pattern, but if you zoom out or change your perspective, it changes,” Shlian says. Created in 2015, measures 48 x 48 inches.

Art Meets Science

These Mesmerizing Paper Sculptures Explore Nature’s Mirrored Structures

Artist Matt Shlian folds, cuts and glues paper to create faceted and curved works of art

The portrait in question, by Dutch painter Barend Graat

Is This a Portrait of One of the World’s Most Influential Philosophers?

One Dutch art dealer is convinced that he owns the only portrait that Baruch Spinoza sat for

"Pick, Pan, Shovel," Ed Ruscha, 1980

The History of the American West Gets a Much-Needed Rewrite

Artists, historians and filmmakers alike have been guilty of creating a mythologized version of the U.S. expansion to the west

Robert Motherwell writing at his desk in Amagansett, New York, June 1944

These Letters Written by Famous Artists Reveal the Lost Intimacy of Putting Pen to Paper

Many of the letters included in a new book provide snapshots of especially poignant moments in the lives of American artists

"The Hive" is on display at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in London, England, through the end of 2017.

Art Meets Science

This Sculpture Is Controlled by Live Honeybees

Artist Wolfgang Buttress collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to create a giant, metallic hive

Still Life With Spirit and Xitle by Jimmie Durham, 2007, goes on view at the Hirshhorn Museum.

Meet the Man Who Dropped a Boulder on a Chrysler

Ex-pat rebel sculptor Jimmie Durham's funny work is celebrated in the capital of the country he left

Does 'The Last Supper' Really Have a Hidden Meaning?

Could the painting actually contain a message from Leonardo?

Images are fast outpacing words as the major means of communication.

Commentary

How to Avoid the Pitfalls in the Politics of Graphic Messaging

The director of the National Portrait Gallery offers a few pointers on how to acquire visual intelligence

"Fading Thoughts" by Andrew Myers

Please Touch the Art: This Artist Creates Tactile Portraits for the Blind

Andrew Myers uses screws to make 3-D masterpieces for curious fingers

Participants in "The Leading Strand" project share their prototypes with each other.

Art Meets Science

Here's What Happens When Neuroscientists and Designers Team Up to Explain Scientific Research

A new interdisciplinary project results in a moving sculpture, an animated piece, a song that evolves and more

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