Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Roulette Became New York’s Music Lab
Pursuing an aesthetic guided as much by John Coltrane as by John Cage, Roulette became a crucial laboratory for the downtown-music scene, providing artists...
How Copyright Has Killed Music (Except For Taylor Swift)
If giving people money encourages them to create, then surely giving them more money would encourage them to create more music, right? The answer...
Christie’s Auction Sale Has Good Night, Despite Cyber Attack
It was a "reassuringly solid result of $346.5m ($413.3m with fees) from its Modern evening sale—within its pre-sale estimate of $340m-$493.5m (calculated without fees)."...
A Year After Its “Year Of Culture” Honors, Leeds’ Arts Scene Is Collapsing
Last year, the city of Leeds held a year-long celebration of culture. This year, however, artists and creatives in the West Yorkshire city are being...
How Grantmakers Can Support Artists Of Color
Historical ideas of what constitutes arts and culture and the roots of racial injustice are being re-examined, and these investments mark a step in...
Broadway Is More Expensive Than Ever. But Where Are The Audiences?
It feels a bit like the Roaring '20s - appropriate since the current Broadway season also features a musical adaptation of "The Great Gatsby."...
Why We’re Still Having Difficulty Adjusting To Hybrid Work
On the one hand, a reduction in the number of work-related commutes is good for the environment. On the other, entire days spent on...
What’s It Mean To Live In A Virtual Community? Look To The Real Cities...
Misinformation graffiti is going to haunt me. But, cities, over time, learned how to deal with those problems to make cities more livable—but the...
The End Of Giant Music Festivals?
2024 will also be known as the true beginning of the end of mega-live music festival culture with the unexciting two weekends of Coachella...
Was The 1960 Venice Biennale Rigged To Choose Rauschenberg?
“Taking Venice” doesn’t take a position on whether dishonest mischief sullied the jury’s process of choosing Rauschenberg, although it does leave the appropriate sense...
What King Charles’ First Portrait Is Meant To Convey About Him
It’s worth putting this into the context of “self-fashioning” in portraiture, succinctly described by the literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt in 1980 as a process where identity...
Will Machines Replace Us? Naw — We Colonize A Different Space
This is simultaneously a misplaced conceit and misconceived fear: There are varied environmental niches to exploit and to dominate even in ecosystems with an...
The Line Between Fine Art And Craft Is Blurring
In many ways, it is obvious that furniture could be a direct expression of human thoughts and feelings. There is its closeness to the...
How Gian Carlo Menotti And Carlisle Floyd Defined Mid-20th Century Opera
As a composer, Menotti was consigned to the bittersweet status described by Somerset Maugham to characterize his own fiction—“in the first rank of the...
Corruption Roils China’s Top Music Conservatories
The public nature of Xue’s allegations has shaken the classical music world in China. And while these allegations are unproven, they highlight structural issues...
Cities Have Become Obsessed With Taller Buildings
Seven times more buildings of 150 metres or taller have sprung up since 2000 than were constructed in the entire 20th century. Five decades...
Transcendent Experiences: Dancing In The Louvre
"Over the years, I have felt many things in the world’s most-visited, and arguably most-famous, museum — irritation, exhaustion and some wonder, too. This...
Where Is The Village Voice For The 2020’s?
By rejecting the distinction between observer and observed, subject and author (at least to a degree, and more so in the arts and culture...
How The Language Of TV Is Shaping How We See Ourselves
You see a lot of this on TikTok now: videos that describe ordinary life using the language of television. Scroll through, and you’ll find...
Anna Deavere Smith On Learning To Listen To Americans
Stereotypes come about when we stop looking. Why we stop looking is something we all need to discern for ourselves. When we stop looking,...
Taylor Swift Remixed (DIY For Fans Who Wanted Something More From The Latest Album)
A small cottage industry of DJs, musicians and producers have been twiddling with TTPD since its release last month, and adding their own twists. -...
Filter Wars: How Our Digital Life Is Killing Creativity
"In any industry what matters is not what you’re making, but how many followers you have. Do you want to do something, do you...
Why Apple’s “Crush Creativity” Ad Is So Offensive
Contrary to the walkback last week by Apple marketing communications vice president Tor Myhren — “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re...
The Dancer As Athlete
A 2016 retrospective study that tracked injuries in a professional ballet dance company over a 10-year period found that most dancers experience a new injury every...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Seattle Invasion
“In the past, there seemed to be more movement from L.A. and the Bay Area to OSF, especially in terms of artists, so it’s...
