Art & Artists

Horseshoe crab

Animal Specimens, From Fish to Birds to Mammals, Get Inked

Inspired by Japanese fish rubbings, two University of Texas biologists make spectacular prints of a variety of species at different stages of decay

Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses a powerful scanning electron microscope to capture all of a bee’s microscopic structures in stunning detail. Above: a bee’s antennae sockets, magnified 43 times.

What Does A Bee Look Like When It’s Magnified 3000 Times?

Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses a powerful microscope to capture all of a bee's microscopic structures and textures in stunning detail

Todd Oldham (left) is a designer and president of L-7 Designs who announced the award, David Fischer (right) is the CEO of Grief Inc who accepted the award for PAck h2O.

Cooper-Hewitt Announces Design Award Winners

As part of National Design Week, National Design award winners celebrated their achievements with a gala held October 17

You might be curious, is this something macroscopic or microscopic? It’s actually the wing of a green darner dragonfly, as seen through a scanning electron microscope.

Macro or Micro? Test Your Sense of Scale

A geographer and a biologist at Salem State University team up to curate a new exhibition, featuring confounding views from both satellites and microscopes

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Why We Gave Susan Seubert the Keys to our Instagram Account

Who wouldn’t want to transport themselves to Hawaii via their smartphone?

“Alexis”

This Photographer Shoots Portraits With a Thermal Camera

Artist Linda Alterwitz uses a camera that detects radiant heat, instead of light, uncovering hidden thermal signatures in everyday scenes

Defrosting the Crests of Inca City, LAT: -81.5° LONG: 296.3° “The nature of this polygonal network, unique on Mars, remains poorly understood, but seems to be linked to volcanic dykes covered by eolian sand. These terrains are close to the South pole and undergo springtime defrosting in dark patches that become progressively larger as temperatures climb,” writes geophysicist Nicolas Mangold in This is Mars.

This Is Mars in Extremely High Resolution

French designer Xavier Barral pored over 30,000 images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera, selecting the most appealing for his book

Artist Nickolay Lamm’s depiction of a polar-grizzly hybrid

What Would a Cross Between a Polar Bear and a Grizzly Really Look Like?

As climate changes and Arctic sea ice melts, species shift habitats and may interbreed. Lamm digitally manipulates photographs to imagine these hybrids

A calcified flamingo, preserved by the highly basic waters of Tanzania’s Lake Natron and photographed by Nick Brandt

This Alkaline African Lake Turns Animals into Stone

Photographer Nick Brandt captures haunting images of calcified animals, preserved by the extreme waters of Tanzania's Lake Natron

Oto Gillen, “untitled, (Vanitas),” 2007, traditional chromogenic print, mat board, UV glass, mahogany, screws

Snack on This: One Curator Has Devoted a Whole Show to Pizza Art

What is it about that slice of cheesy goodness that makes it such an appealing subject for these artists?

The Crab Pulsar, located in the Crab Nebula, is one of the celestial bodies Mickey Hart has translated into music.

Former Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Composes Music from the Sounds of the Universe

Hart teams up with a Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist to translate light and electromagnetic waves into octaves humans can hear

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Inside America’s Great Romance With Norman Rockwell

A new biography of the artist reveals the complex inner life of our greatest and most controversial illustrator

Carlos, by Joseph Rodriguez: a sense of ownership of the city

An Exploration of Latino Art at the Smithsonian

Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough previews a new exhibit at the American Art Museum

Martin Klimas captures “Sonic Sculptures” of songs by setting paint atop a speaker and cranking the volume. Above: “Time,” by Pink Floyd.

The Sounds of Pink Floyd, Daft Punk and James Brown, As Expressed by Flying Paint

Photographer Martin Klimas sets paint atop a speaker and cranks the volume, snapping shots as the boom of music pulses paint into the air

Osmia chalybea, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia

Bee-utiful! The Stinging Insect Gets a Close-Up

Biologist Sam Droege's sharply-focused photographs of bees, used for identifying different species, make for fine art

Hairy woodpecker (Picoides villosus)

Diana Beltran Herrera’s Flock of Paper Birds

We are not talking origami here. The Colombian artist has created paper sculptures of more than 100 species, and they are startlingly realistic

“Sonic Bloom,” a solar sculpture at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle

Energy Innovation

Sonic Bloom! A New Solar-Powered Sculpture

Dan Corson's latest installation in Seattle—flower sculptures that light up at night—show that solar energy is viable even in the cloudy Pacific Northwest

Oceanographer Gareth Lawson, who studies pteropods, was able to identify Kavanagh’s sculptures to species, such as this Limacina helicina.

The Gorgeous Shapes of Sea Butterflies

Cornelia Kavanagh's sculptures magnify tiny sea butterflies—ocean acidification's unlikely mascots—hundreds of times

Photographer Kieran Dodds has temporarily taken over the Smithsonian magazine Instagram account.

Six Questions With Photographer Kieran Dodds

The photojournalist talks about his Bionic Man assignment and what his plans are for taking over our Instagram account

What Happens When You Freeze Flowers and Shoot Them With a Gun?

With the help of a little liquid nitrogen, German photographer Martin Klimas captures the fragile chaos of flowers as they explode

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