Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Good Morning
Leading the news today: A major escalation in the political scrutiny of national cultural institutions. Senate investigators say they have obtained documents suggesting the...
Sorry, But This Sounds Creepy: How AI Might Put You In The Movie You’re...
Producer Charlie Brooker proposes scanning the faces of cinemagoers as they enter the theater and then using AI to cast them “randomly” in the...
Silicon Valley Is Pivoting To Audio And Away From Screens
The move reflects where the entire tech industry is headed — toward a future where screens become background noise and audio takes center stage....
25 Dance Artists To Watch In 2026
These dancers, choreographers, directors, and companies are already doing exceptional work, but we’re betting on them to break through in a major way in...
Rijksmuseum Director On The Humanness Of Museums
“In a good museum, it’s a lot about imagination. You don’t want to spell things out. We are complex. History is complex, and history...
AMC Declares Its Live Event With Netflix A Huge Success
In addition to the countless millions of people who will enjoy Stranger Things on the Netflix streaming platform, in just two days, more than 753,000 Stranger Things fans...
Prince’s Withering Putdown Of Digital Musicians
“The kid with the PC in the bedroom can’t play his instrument. He can make some sounds, and then you can get a vast...
The Playwright Contemplating The Post-Human World
“Everyone was afraid of the telephone, everyone was afraid of television,” Harrison said. “It’s just going to march on. And we’ll acclimate.” - The...
Doug Varone Talks About Cancelling His Date At The Kennedy Center
"I do believe they should be separate. And the success of the Kennedy Center, you know, working in a bipartisan way, has been an...
Ten Questions For Theatre In 2026
Each year, theater producers and publicists work to make opening night more and more meaningless. Given that this is the night that reviews come out,...
Trump Plans To Reconstitute The “Commission Of Fine Arts” To Approve His Projects
The White House is expected to invite past Trump appointees to rejoin the Commission of Fine Arts, according to three people who spoke on...
Five Year-end Observations about the state of Arts and Culture in 2025
We posted more than 6,000 stories across all forms of culture in 2025. When you pull back and look at them in aggregate, the individual crises—the closures in San Francisco, the lawsuits in D.C., the endless op-eds about the "death of cinema"—stop looking like isolated incidents. They resolve into a
The Walrus’ Year In Arts And Culture
These were the economic and political forces shaping culture in 2025. From the decline of the middle-class musician and the digitization of art to...
Twelve Stories That Defined 2025 For Museums
In the U.S., a tense political climate and moves by the Trump administration to exert more control over the country’s cultural institutions is creating...
In A Time Of Flattened Attention, It’s Time To Reconsider The Complications Of Saul...
The persistent cultural resistance to Bellow, who remains popularly read yet broadly under-appreciated by the taste-making classes, comes in several flavors. Over the decades...
In Memoriam: Art World Luminaries We Lost In 2025
Some were giants in their fields, while others have had quieter, less-heralded careers—and some leave behind questionable legacies. - Artnet
Here’s What’s Wrong With Letting AI Take Over Lower-Level Creative Work
What’s the harm, studio executives might wonder, if machines take over work that seems unchallenging and rote to knowledgeable professionals? The problem is that entry-level...
Kennedy Center’s Threats To Sue Artists Who Cancel Are Ultimately Empty
Richard Grenell’s letter argues not only that Redd has harmed the Center’s finances, but that his withdrawal constitutes an “act of intolerance” driven by...
The Podcast Trap — Why Have I Stopped Listening To Music?
My change in listening habits comes from a compulsion that many people in my life share: to make every minute of the day as...
All About Ratings? This Year’s Kennedy Center Honors Ratings Tank
The show averaged 3.01 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s report, CBS publicist Julie Holland shared in an email Tuesday — down about 25 percent...
An AI Country Song Hit No. 1 On The Charts. So What Do Nashville...
When “Walk My Walk” went No. 1, several observers disputed the narrative that country music was being overrun by AI. They noted that relatively few country listeners...
Dancers Who Are Focusing On Climate Change
"It's literally being a body in space, drawing attention in a way that is effective. Often the effectiveness is in making the information very...
2025 Was The Year AI Didn’t Transform Our Lives (Like It Was Supposed To)
Silicon Valley promised 2025 would be the age of tireless AI agents. Instead, they clicked slowly, got lost in drop‑down menus, hallucinated baseball maps,...
2026’s Most-Anticipated Museum Openings
Will the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi finally open its doors after all this time? That remains to be seen, but there’s certainly a chance! Here’s...
UK Streaming Viewers Prefer Lower Price With Ads Rather Than Premium
The number of UK streaming subscribers on packages that include commercials has overtaken those on higher-priced ad-free plans for the first time, in a...
