Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Archaeologists Find Intact 18th Century Ship Off Norway
In addition to the well-preserved ceramics, researchers found barrels of grain and an array of high-end European-made goods ranging from chandeliers to stemmed glasses....
Report: Arts Audiences Are Growing In Australia
The survey, conducted since 2009 and last published in 2022, has found that almost all Australians (98%) engage with the arts in some capacity...
Why We Crave Social Interaction
Among humans, “you can feel lonely at a party, or you can feel fine alone in your office." Whatever the ideal degree of togetherness,...
Have You Ever Really Looked Carefully At The Declaration Of Independence?
It’s poetry, philosophy and polemic, all in a little more than 1,300 words and all represented in its second and most famous sentence. -...
Arguing For The Arts: Careful What You Claim
Why aren’t people more careful when it comes to making claims about the benefits of the arts? Quite frankly, because shoddy research and even...
Report: Half Of British Musicians Have Lost EU Work Since Brexit
The report by European Movement UK, a cross-party campaign group advocating closer UK-EU relations, found that nearly half of British musicians had experienced a reduced...
We Have Entered The Imagination Era
We have moved beyond the Information Age and are now firmly rooted in what I call the Imagination Era, a time when ideas and thinking differently...
Study: A High Percentage Of Musicians Are Using AI In their Work
A new study from the Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music found that 33 percent of respondents “use AI to generate initial ideas, melodies, or reference...
Musicians Union Sues UMG And Warner Over License Deals For AI
“The AFM brings this lawsuit because defendants, two of the largest music companies in the world, have licensed sound recordings on which AFM-represented musicians...
Universal Music Group Contemplating A $1.5B Bond Sale
Universal Music has a one euro billion bridge loan, which was arranged earlier this year, that matures in late July – as well as...
How America Lost Control Of Its History
A nation defined by blood and soil—built around a shared religion or ethnicity—can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though,...
AI Backlash: Reaching For Vinyl
Good Morning,
Three stories today circle a backlash to AI: when the machines flood the zone, people reach for what they can hold. A wave...
What I Saw From Inside The Kennedy Center Meltdown
Palermo also said Trump's Truth Social post about handing control back to Congress sounded like an attempt to distance himself from an institution. He...
Austin Opera seeks Director of Artistic Administration
The Director of Artistic Administration oversees Austin Opera’s artistic staff and works closely with the executive leadership to plan and execute season programming.
The Problem With Responses To AI Creations
At its core, this is a debate about values. A short story implies a human artistic act with intentional imaginative labour—the exact practice whose...
Will People Embrace The First AI Art Museum?
Dataland — a museum built with artificial intelligence — arrives as debates explode across socio-political lines about the impact of the advancing technology on...
Tired Of Streaming, People Are Turning To Physical Media
"Ten years ago, the average age of people walking in here were, 40, 50, 60. Now 20 and 22, we are even getting...
States Say They Will Sue To Block Paramount/Warner Deal
If Paramount doesn’t lock this down by October, it’s on the hook to pay shareholders a near-$6.9 million daily fee. - Gizmodo
Paramount Launches A Games Studio
Paramount Games Studio launches as Paramount Skydance is awaiting regulatory approval on its pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD has its own in-house...
Sotheby’s Tried To Quietly Sell A Pollock For $50M. It Didn’t Go Well
According to one source familiar with the effort, Sotheby’s could not find enough bidders to get the auction off the ground. The auction was...
Audiobook Sales Up 9 Percent In 2025, To $2.4B
General fiction accounted for the largest share of audiobook revenue at 27%, with science fiction/fantasy, romance, and mysteries/thrillers/suspense rounding out the top genres. The...
AJ Chronicles: A New Policy to Eliminate Arguments for the Arts
This notion that the ultimate measure of American educational value is economic is an impoverishing one. We measure for success. If that measure is earnings then we optimize for earnings. Social value measured on an earnings scale doesn't just get deprioritized, it doesn't exist.
YouTubers Invade This Summer’s Movie Theatre Screens
Kane Parsons, 20, and Curry Barker, 26, the directors behind Backrooms and Obsession who both built their audiences on YouTube, have become two of the youngest filmmakers to...
Good AI? Model Proposes Thousands Of Designs, Test Them, Then Adapts
The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans...
Lessons From The Enhanced Games
Trying to break world records remains a high-risk, high-reward strategy for Enhanced. The event proved that breaking records is incredibly difficult, even with PEDs...
