Smithsonian Magazine April/May 2026

TO TAKE IN A MUSEUM EXHIBITION, with all its art and historical significance, is to appreciate the meticulous planning that goes into it. Designers create galleries around relevant objects; curators spend years digging through centuries-old archives; art handlers agonize over mounting a painting just right. Yet one historic item on the National Mall landed at the Smithsonian with far less deliberation. Secretary S. Dillon Ripley first brought a carousel to Washington in 1967, calling it a “living extension of the museums,” although some people worried it was more silly than substantive. The New York Times even reported concerns that the Institution was becoming an “ivy-covered Disneyland.” Despite the doubts, the Smithsonian has managed to maintain Ripley’s vision, curating an artifact with a richer story than many of our grandest buildings.…

“The idea that petroglyphs exist in the vastness of the Sahara was surprising!” Real-Life Drama I read your article on the British propaganda radio station during World War II and thought it so interesting (“Voice of Deception,” March 2026). Then I went looking to see if someone had made a movie or PBS-style miniseries. And there was nothing! A rag-tag group of artists and outcasts fighting Nazis through the power of media. How has Hollywood not gotten on top of this? Bray Wright | Clawson, Michigan It was inspiring to learn that Agnes Bernauer was half Jewish. She had escaped Germany, and then she was aiding the war effort in such a significant manner. Congratulations to author April White for a well-written history that needs to be remembered. Clark Carboneau…

A ROAD TRIP today can feel like an industrial affair: You travel 80 miles per hour on six-lane highways, where brightly lit exits deposit you at 24-hour fuel stops and chain motels. Yet not that long ago Route 66, a two-lane highway, was the height of modernity. “See America’s Wonderland,” crowed 1940s billboards advertising the road, which then represented the fast lane to the future, connecting Chicago to California in a shining example of early interstate travel. When cars were new, in the early 1900s, railroads offered the most reliable long-distance transportation. Thoroughfares called “highways” were often unpaved paths along what had once been hunting trails or wagon ruts. Many had poor signage and were prone to washouts—and featured terrifying corners that might be fine for a horse but wreaked…

1. THE GRAPES OF WRATH In this 1940 film, adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel, the Joad family leaves Oklahoma amid the Great Depression and heads along Route 66 toward the promise of California. The New York Times lauded the Dust Bowl migration tale as deserving of a place on a “small, uncrowded shelf devoted to the cinema’s masterworks.” 2. EASY RIDER In Easy Rider, two men score big in a Los Angeles cocaine deal, then ride toward Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Directed by Dennis Hopper, the 1969 film cast Route 66 as a symbol of freedom and helped push Hollywood onto a new road of its own, ushering in an era when directors with distinct voices and visions began to run the show. 3. TWO-LANE BLACKTOP Starring the singer-songwriter…

THE FRENCH AMERICAN artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made a splash when his Fountain, an impishly repurposed porcelain urinal, was rejected by a major New York art show in 1917. But while he became a household name through his conception of “readymade” sculpture, Duchamp spent his six-decade career experimenting with nearly every available medium and subject. In April, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will mount the artist’s first U.S. retrospective in more than half a century. The exhibition includes more than 200 works—including a 1968 replica of Fountain —that, together, tell the story of art in the 20th century. Duchamp, who once confessed to a friend, “All painting and sculpture exhibitions make me sick,” might have laughed at such a claim. Yet his place in art history, he…

IN 1755, TENSIONS WERE beginning to rise in the American Colonies following the outbreak of the French and Indian War. Yet one of that year’s most consequential developments for American independence happened on a Mediterranean island more than 4,000 miles away: After more than two decades of struggle, the Corsican people declared independence from their Genoese overlords, who had laid claim to the island for 500 years. Would-be revolutionaries in America soon followed the situation in Corsica with interest. Colonial rabble-rousers were especially fired up by the exploits of Pasquale Paoli, chosen as the leader of independent Corsica. Particularly in the 1760s, Paoli became a media sensation in America, and inspired by this Paolifever, patriots went on to name towns, and even children, after the great Corsican. In 1767, the…