Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. - SMU Cultural Data
When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be...
How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a...
Broadway Veteran Makes Leading Lady Debut At 96
June Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman-led production of “Gypsy” as a replacement for one of the strippers. What would she...
Supreme Court Appeared To Be Leaning Toward Internet Companies In Music Piracy Case
During nearly two hours of argument, the court appeared to be leaning toward the internet companies – perhaps on narrow grounds. - CNN
Canadians Are Buying Canadian. How About Music Too?
Canada has been neglecting our (excellent and varied) music scene for the past decade. A post-pandemic evaluation of the government’s Canada Music Fund revealed...
Netflix: Viewership Of Southeast Asian Content Up 50 Percent In 2025
More than 100 Southeast Asian titles have appeared in Netflix’s Global Top 10. Over 40 of those titles charted in 2025 alone. Titles from...
Cliches Have Gotten A Bad Rap
While I agree that leaning on a cliché might be a prosaic get-out-of-jail-free card, I do think they get a bad rap. The general...
Why Close Reading Is Having A Moment
I learned about close reading when I asked them to take their own thinking seriously—to take themselves seriously. Doing so, I found, forced me...
How A “Broken” Reader Learned To Loving Reading Again
It took weeks for me to realize that I was a broken reader. I assumed I’d just had a streak of bad luck in...
A Race To Save Our Recorded Music History
A huge portion of the world’s recorded musical heritage is stored on magnetic tape, used regularly from the 1940s into the digital age to...
Hamnet — The Shakespeare For Our Times?
Most of all, I was struck by how the film chose to portray William Shakespeare, the greatest poet in the English language, as a...
Why We Need Systemic Support For Arts And Humanities
Arts and humanities scholarship is not an ornament, it is the record of what human minds have made, imagined and endured. To let those...
Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Internet Providers Can Be Liable For Music Piracy
The Supreme Court on Monday grappled with the practical implications of a closely watched copyright clash testing whether internet providers can be held liable...
Christopher Knight Reflects On His Career At The LA Times
Sprawl is usually cast as an L.A. negative, but it was good for art. The horizontal city is just too big to fully gentrify;...
Have We Given Liberal Arts Institutions Too Much Credit?
While liberal arts institutions do have intrinsic value, that doesn’t mean they are entitled to be socially favoured or economically exceptional for ever. A...
Why Perfectionism Is Killing Our Culture
This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to...
Tom Stoppard, Man of Ideas
A man of consummate urbanity who lived like a country squire, he was a sportsman (cricket was his game) and a connoisseur of ideas,...
Museums Struggle To Reinvent In A Shifting Landscape
As public funding evaporates, political scrutiny intensifies, and donor behavior shifts, museums are confronting a turning point: adapt or risk irrelevance. The museums best poised...
Johnny Cash Estate Sues Coca Cola Under New “Elvis Act” For Using His Artistic...
The case has been filed under the Elvis Act of Tennessee, made effective last year, which protects a person’s voice from exploitation without consent....
Tennessee Libraries Shut Down For Republicans’ Book Purge
Public libraries in Tennessee have begun to shut down as they carry out an order from state officials to remove children’s books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters....
Detroit Institute Of Arts Reimagines “Museum As Instrument Of Cultural Education”
The DIA has achieved a rare feat with its presentations: making art history feel unexpected, and so, truer to life. What immediate change it chooses...
Apply Now: Canada’s National Arts Centre Mentorship Program
A paid side-by-side opportunity in Ottawa, Canada for emerging and early-career orchestral musicians, conductors and administrators. International applicants welcome.
John Oliver’s Benefit Auction For Public Broadcasting Sets Million-Dollar Record For Bob Ross Painting
On Monday, Ross’ Cabin at Sunset, painted for a 1986 episode of PBS’ iconic “The Joy of Painting”, sold for roughly $1,044,000. - ARTnews
LA Phil Grants Its YOLA Youth Orchestra Program A Reprieve After Pushback
After recently announcing major cuts to its youth orchestra, the L.A. Phil has secured additional donor funding to ensure the East L.A. branch of the...
