Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
An Enormous Number Of Impressive New Museums Are Opening. But Aren’t Museums In Distress?
Is it the idea that the art museum as we’ve understood it is under genuine existential threat, a relic of a battered Enlightenment worldview?...
An Awful Summer At The Movie Box Office
Is it time for Hollywood to concede that a lot of moviegoers in North America are never coming back? That movie theaters have permanently...
Classical Music Is Expensive To Make. How To Finance It?
In the end it comes down to a simple question. Western classical music as a living art form – do we want it or...
AI Bots Are Destroying The Web
When AI searchbots, with Meta (52% of AI searchbot traffic), Google (23%), and OpenAI (20%) leading the way, clobber websites with as much as...
How Indie Music Became The Voice Of A Generation And Then Ate Itself
The real reason that indie started to die is Spotify. As streaming supplanted downloads and album sales, it automated music discovery. Instead of reading Pitchfork or...
After Cuts WGBH Lays Off Staff For “American Experience” History Series
WGBH, the bellwether public TV station in Boston, has laid off the 13 people who worked on the history series “American Experience” and announced...
Why So Many Of Our Novels Are Driven By TV
Novels are better than television, but the surest way to make money from novels is to write with television in mind. - n+1
Director Says Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum Will Have To Close If Urgent Repairs Aren’t...
Director Emilie Gordenker says the original building, which is owned by the Dutch state, is in such poor condition it needs urgent and extensive...
Meta Created AI Versions Of Celebrities Without Permission
Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities – including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez – to create dozens...
AI Is Changing Who Gets To Be A Musician
Generative AI, with its ability to spit out seemingly unique content, has divided the music world, with musicians and industry groups complaining that recorded...
“Hamilton” Was A Huge Success. And Then The Mood Turned Sour
The world that received “Hamilton” in July 2020, however, was not the world that had made it the toast of the 2016 Tony Awards. The show’s...
Familiar Playbook: A War On Freedom Of Ideas
Despots over the ages devised a lopsided way of funding science that punished blue-sky thinkers and promoted gadget makers. Mr. Trump’s science policies, experts say,...
Kentucky Church Urges Parishioners To Check “Offensive” Books Out Of Libraries And Never Return...
“Yes — we have urged Christians, both locally and across the country, to search their libraries for books that promote sodomy, gender confusion and...
Why I’m Not Reviewing A Fascinating New Collection Of Virginia Woolf Letters (And What...
"It is hard to think that the world once fondly referred to as one “of letters” does not half-deserve its dwindling readerships and...
Egypt Recovers Treasures From 2000-Year-Old Submerged City Off The Coast Of Alexandria
“There’s a lot underwater, but what we’re able to bring up is limited, it’s only specific material according to strict criteria. The rest will...
Anna Netrebko Returns To The London Stage. Critics Still Haven’t Forgotten Her Putin Ties
At the peak of her career, aged 50, she was effectively banned from the stages of Europe, following Russia’s full-scale illegal invasion of Ukraine....
How The End Of The Full-Time Critic Changes Culture
There is a seismic shift happening in the media landscape, fueled by the rise of digital platforms, declining print readership and mass layoffs in...
Smithsonian Secretary Meets With Trump Over President’s Escalating Pressure On Museums
A White House official described the exchange as productive and cordial and confirmed that White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan — who was tasked with...
Data Trends: Arts Organizations Cut Expenses In 2024
As organizations respond to declining revenue and higher prices, expense budgets tightened by an average of 23%. This decrease includes significant dips in both personnel and non-personnel expenses for...
A Year Ago, UK Literary Festivals Cut Ties With Funder With Fossil Fuel Ties....
Nine literary festivals parted ways with investment company Baillie Gifford last summer amid controversy over its involvement with fossil fuels and companies that operate in Israel,...
What We Lose When Philanthropy Becomes Bureaucratic And Safe
Over the past several decades, philanthropy has become much more bureaucratic: if you want a grant from one of these well-endowed foundations, you have...
The Idea Of Freedom Has A Long And Fraught History
"Freedom is neither a fixed idea nor a story of progress toward a predetermined goal. The history of American freedom is a tale of...
What Social Science Says About The Value Of Diversity
Whatever the fate of modern DEI programs in corporate America, diversity of experience, thought, and ideology is a meritorious goal for a company to pursue....
The Most Enduring Tune In History?
Why did this humble tune, first conjured by medieval farmers, capture so many people’s imaginations and even feature in The Addams Family? - BBC
Hope For AI: Consciousness Across Generations
Might the relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence follow a similar logic—a hope of consciousness helping consciousness across generations? Perhaps the best thing that...
