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.

John Alexander (b. 1945) is internationally renowned for his paintings and drawings, which convey humor, rage and a robust appreciation of the human and natural world. "John Alexander: A Retrospective," on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from Dec. 21 through March 16, 2008, is the first full-scale examination of the artist's three-decade career.

What compels people to dance? What fuels the choreographer's creative vision? Why do most dancers devote their entire lives to this art form? Many artists refer to a spirit within that defines and drives their need to move, to create, to dance. It is this spirit that is explored in the evocative Smithsonian traveling exhibition "The Dancer Within."

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, a signature element of the renovated Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, opens to the public Sunday, Nov. 18. The building houses the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

More than 100 of the finest paintings from the Japanese Edo period (1615–1868) will be featured in "Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes: Edo Masters from the Price Collection," on through April 13, 2008 at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

The story of Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the most enduring of ancient Greek myths. According to legend, Jason and his shipmates, the Argonauts, set sail on a perilous journey from Greece to Colchis (modern-day Georgia), then located beyond the known world.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is accepting applications for its Visual and Expressive Arts Grants program designed to support the wide ranging creative activities of Native American artists. The goal of the program is to increase the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of contemporary Native American arts.

“Discovering Rastafari!” charts the origins of the Rastafari culture in colonial Jamaica and its subsequent development into a multilingual movement throughout the African Diaspora and the world. The exhibition uses artifacts, rare photographs and ephemera to explore the emergence and development of the movement in Jamaica, taking viewers beyond the popular Jamaican music known as reggae to the deeper roots of the Rastafari culture.

Was the Inventor of the First Color Photograph a Genius, or a Fraud? New Research Reveals the Answer to a Much-Debated 156 Year-Old Mystery. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), and the Getty Foundation have teamed up to examine a 156 year-old mystery that remains, to this day, one of the most controversial questions in photography – and their research has revealed some rather surprising results.