Art & Design

Forget calming white noise or soothing whispering sounds. We’ll take Japanese tamping brush ASMR any day of the week.

Calling someone's paintings “enormous panoramas of emptiness” was a sick burn in 1952. These rubber baby underpants are just an example of the many unique and unexpected pieces of correspondence in the collections of our Archives of American Art.

Sarah Pratt learned the art of butter sculpting from her beloved teacher, Norma “Duffy” Lyon, and later passed that knowledge on to her daughters, Hannah and Grace. But what traveled across generations wasn’t just technique — it was a shared love.

Listen to “The Three Jimmies” from ‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits,’ Jim Nollman’s first album on Smithsonian Folkways since the 1982 cult-classic ‘Playing Music with Animals.’