Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Good Morning
Los Angeles's two biggest museums are passing each other in opposite directions. The Getty Center announced it will shut down for a full year...
Hirschhorn Museum Director To Become Guggenheim Museum Director
Melissa Chiu, who has led the Hirshhorn for more than a decade, is the fourth director of a Smithsonian museum to depart within the...
Getty Center To Close For A Year
The reopening of the museum, which draws about 1.3 million visitors each year, is planned for spring 2028, shortly before the Summer Olympics come...
London’s Times Newspaper Reduces Story-Count, Increases Readership
Across the whole newsroom, The Times has gone from publishing more than 200 stories a day to about 150 – a 25% cut. -...
Our Zombie Entertainment Industrial Complex
Entertainment and tech companies have gotten smarter about putting consumers into bastardized flow states that leaves people feeling drained and sad rather than challenged...
Library On The US/Canada Border Gets A Door On The Canadian Side
For decades, people in Stanstead were allowed to walk around the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, but last year the U.S. limited access. Instead...
What The Ambitious New LACMA Building Is Trying To Do
The new LACMA, which opens to members in the coming weeks and to the general public May 4, is momentous not only because of...
What’s In The New Writers Guild Contract With Movies Studios
The studios will kick in $321 million — a record sum — to keep the writers’ health fund solvent. The health plan changes are...
South Korea Shakes Up Its Cultural Leadership
South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has announced a series of high-profile appointments across its leading arts institutions, led by the naming...
Who Likes To Be Sad? So Why Do We Seek Out Art That Makes...
It’s a phenomenon that has long puzzled psychologists and philosophers alike. Given that we usually dread sadness and strive to avoid it because it...
In Praise Of Ghostwriting
Ghostwriting has an undeservedly bad reputation. Even without AI, some readers feel betrayed if the name on a book’s cover doesn’t tell the whole...
Disney To Lay Off 1000 Workers
While the layoffs are noteworthy, they are a fraction of the size of the cuts overseen by former CEO Bob Iger when he rejoined...
Spain’s Culture Minister Refuses Transfer Of Guernica For Basque Loan
The Basque government is already familiar with the Reina Sofía’s condition report—which deems the painting too fragile to travel—and that it is instead requesting...
HarperCollins’ Canadian Side-Hustle. Be Wary.
There is every reason to be wary when a foreign-owned corporation stakes a claim to defending Canada’s cultural sovereignty, but the case of HarperCollins...
LACMA Reinvented: Inside LA’s New Museum
No L.A. institution has taken as risky a leap in this century as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With the opening of...
Eco-Dystopian Novels From Africa And Asia Push The Form
Speculative and futuristic visions of environmental calamity are being imagined globally through environmental fiction. Eco-dystopian novels can help people process their fears or mourn...
Wrestling For The Soul Of The Machine
This is a war over whether technology will merely optimise calculations or eliminate a quintessentially human element such calculations can’t capture. But beneath these...
As Canadian Universities Scale Back Music Programs, The Impacts Are Felt In Cities
Research on cultural ecosystems suggests that institutional collaboration is crucial to sustain vibrant arts production. This is especially the case as music and the arts face increasing...
The Market For Non-Fiction Reporting In Books Is Contracting
These developments suggest a rough future for a certain kind of writing: nonfiction that’s based on reportage more than on personal experience or celebrity—a.k.a....
The Scholar Who Traced The Roots Of American Music Back To Africa
A chance encounter fifty years ago "helped fuel a lifelong quest: mapping a musical route that mirrored the trans-Atlantic slave trade and birthed nearly...
Inside The World Of Family Vlogs
The most successful and lucrative family vlogs are indiscreet almost by definition—and yet the wrong kind of indiscretion can derail the whole gravy train. -...
When LiveNation Came To Irvine California
For a jury that has spent weeks listening to experts debate market definitions, vertical integration and other fine points of antitrust law, the testimony...
From Messages to Conversations: AI Agents are Changing how we Find Culture
The first audience for your art is becoming a machine. The question isn't just how to optimize for that machine, it's what you give it to say, and whether what it says is worth a conversation.
Vice President of Marketing and Communications- Brooklyn Academy of Music via TOC Arts Partners
BAM seeks a forward-thinking, and tenacious Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
How Two Recent AI Publishing “Scandals” Will Changing The Books Industry
Stories like Shy Girl and The New York Times’ profile of AI romance author Coral Hart, who boasted of using AI to write and self-publish 200...
