Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Visa Process For Artists To Enter The US Is Capricious And Unpredictable
This summer, five artists — Yumzhana Sui from Buryatia, Michel Lafleur from Haiti, Boluwatife Victoria Lawal and Samuel Olayombo from Nigeria, and Patrick Ruganintwali...
Our Obsession With “Wellness” Has Gotten Seriously Distorted
There’s the softer version of wellness, one characterized by some combination of smoothie consumption and aspirational TikTok videos. Then there are the more hard-line...
Valery Gergiev Concert In Rome Called Off After Outcry Of Protests
The cancellation came after more than 16,000 people, including Nobel laureates, Italian and international politicians and activists, signed a letter addressed to De Luca...
The Grand Ole Opry At 100: An Extraordinary Institution That Powers An Industry
Any given night, the lineup may include mainstream country stars of the present and the distant past, bluegrass bands, gospel vocal groups, singer-songwriters, hotshot...
Millions Of Scientific Research Papers Are Being Published, Overwhelming The System
Unhelpful incentives around academic publishing are blamed for record levels of retractions, the rise in predatory journals, which publish anything for a fee, and the emergence of...
A Robot That Analyzes Paintings And Paints
"If you look at one of our works randomly on the street, you wouldn't be able to say that's made by a robot, but...
Did Christian Marclay Have Only One Good Idea?
The Clock, a 24-hour, MoMA-headlining video-clock, has enjoyed a rare Barbenheimer blockbuster status in the art world. It’s a real-time video, edited from thousands of...
Where Defunding Public Broadcasting Will Really Matter
Resistance from Murkowski and other lawmakers from rural states exposed an uncomfortable truth about federal funding for public media stations: Rural stations — often...
Donors Withdraw Support From Museum After DeSantis Assigns It To A College
Donors are reportedly planning to pull support from, or have already severed ties with, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art following its...
Have We Amused Ourselves To Death Yet?
Neil Postman, who died in 2003, predicted that America wasn’t trending toward existence under the boot of totalitarianism, as in George Orwell’s “1984,” but...
Is There Cultural Resonance In Silenced Languages?
Does silence have its own language, I wonder? And if it does, what is it? Is it that of benumbed Russians, lost to resurrected,...
A Movie About Modigliani! And Johnny Depp! So What Could Go Wrong?
Johnny Depp’s new film Modi: Three Days on the Wings of Madness explores the artist’s struggle to sell his work, and the tension that existed between...
What Price Culture? Governments Reassess
From the role of large-scale cultural events like the European Capital of Culture to the so-called “Bilbao effect” (where a new cultural site is thought to spark revitalisation and economic...
Will AI Kill TV?
When AI is generating all the scripts, performances, music and visual design, and there are no more creative humans whose work the machines can...
How Popular Culture Trained Us In The Art Of The Conspiracy Theory
The promise of elusive answers implores you to plunge deeper, deeper, into a thriller of your own, one that you both consume and help...
So Many Things Are Problematic About Dostoyevsky In Today’s Culture. And Yet…
As for Dostoyevsky himself, there is something dark and dangerous, perhaps even depraved, about his work which makes him more relevant to contemporary readers...
What Made The Choreography In “A Chorus Line” And “Chicago” So Distinctive 50 Years...
The showbiz-cynical attitude of “Chicago,” a tale of 1920s murderers who go into vaudeville, was inseparable from its choreographic style. “A Chorus Line” was about Broadway...
Henry James, Critic: The Art Of Dissection
Even when James was nominally assessing a particular work, he was in fact taking stock of its author’s more general bearing. In his determinedly...
The NYT Is Replacing Its Theatre Critic. So What Is Needed?
Diversity matters. So does excellence. And the future of theatre criticism at the Times should reflect both. So what kind of critic do we...
How Higher Ed Failed Poor Students
Higher education has become regressive, widening class divisions by delivering far greater returns to wealthy students than to their low-income peers. - Washington Post
Can Alan Garber Save Harvard?
Ever since William F. Buckley Jr. turned his alma mater, Yale, into a bête noire, the American right has dreamed of shattering the left’s...
The Most Dangerous Book In America
What has been labeled the “bible of the racist right” has influenced American culture in a way only fiction can—by harnessing the force of...
Inside The Collapse Of The Innovative Publisher Unbound
I’m currently in a WhatsApp group for ex-Unbound authors which is a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous: we introduce ourselves then tell our unique but...
Research: Links Between Learning And Innovation
Just as music relies on rhythm and harmony, effective team learning requires structured, harmonious sequencing. - Harvard Business Review
Ideology And The Censorious Tilt Against Art
Art has become so heavily politicised, so narrowly interpreted through the lens of identity and ideology, that many people can no longer even see the art...
