The National Portrait Gallery has commissioned a portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics, from David Lenz, winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006. The painting will be included in the National Portrait Gallery's permanent collection.

LL Cool J, Erykah Badu, Common and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are just a few of the hip hop artists featured in paintings and photographs in "RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture." The exhibition opens at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery Feb. 8 and continues through Oct. 26, 2008.

The quiet but significant revolution that was launched by artists working outdoors in 19th-century France is explored through some 100 paintings, pastels, and photographs as well as artist and tourist ephemera assembled for the exhibition In the Forest of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet at the National Gallery of Art, East Building, from March 2 through June 8, 2008.

The views of the solar system that one can see while standing here on Earth are often impressive, if not mindblowing. But from the inner solar system to its outer reaches, the closer and more detailed views of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the other planets that have been achieved during the Space Age show unparalleled beauty and visions difficult to fathom.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts has lent 20 works from its extraordinary collection to the exhibition L'Arte delle Donne dal Rinascimento al Surrealismo (Women in Art from Renaissance to Surrealism) on view at the Palazzo Reale in Milan through March 9, 2008.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has received a gift of $4.5 million from the A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation. The gift will fund the completion of a major new exhibition “On the Water: Stories from Maritime America,” scheduled to open in 2009.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) located in Washington, D.C. has lent 20 works from its extraordinary collection to the exhibition L’Arte delle Donne dal Rinascimento al Surrealismo (Women in Art from Renaissance to Surrealism) on view at the Palazzo Reale in Milan through March 9, 2008.

Urbana Restaurant and Wine Bar offers special à la carte menu on New Year’s Eve.

Details of the nation's first truly combined National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) were announced today in New York City. It will take place June 10-14, 2008 in Denver, Colorado, NPAC is expected to bring together nearly 5,000 actors, administrators, conductors, producers, dancers, trustees, singers, marketers, critics, composers, volunteers, musicians, businesses, instrumentalists, educators, directors, fundraisers and agents.

The New Museum, one of the nation’s leading showcases for the art of our time and New York City’s only museum devoted exclusively to contemporary art, will open its new building on the Bowery to the public on Saturday, December 1, 2007.

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History joined with inventor Daniel A. Henderson to acquire two prototypes and related documentation for a pioneering wireless picturephone technology developed in 1993. Henderson recently was awarded six U. S. patents for innovation incorporated in the wireless system and device.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum debuted a major site-specific light sculpture by Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) Saturday, Nov. 3. Holzer is an internationally renowned artist best known for her pioneering work incorporating texts into light-based sculptures and projections. The sculpture, titled "For SAAM," is on public display in the museum's third floor Lincoln Gallery with other contemporary artworks from the permanent collection.