With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

What Does It Mean To Be 'Cool'? The Smithsonian Is Here To Explain

WASHINGTON (AP) — Curators at the National Portrait Gallery want to know what it means to be cool.

It's a uniquely American concept with roots in jazz slang that's become a global obsession. Over the past five years, curators have chosen 100 photographs of people who helped define cool as a word for rebellion, self-expression, charisma, edge and mystery.

In a new exhibition opening Friday, that hard-to-define concept gets a scholarly treatment. "American Cool" traces the idea back to the "granddaddies of cool," Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass, and unfolds through the generations, leading to Jay-Z, Johnny Depp and Madonna....

Read entire article at Associated Press