Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Italy’s Undersecretary For Culture Has Been Indicted For Art Theft
The current undersecretary for culture in the Giorgia Meloni government has been indicted for the alleged theft of a painting by Rutilio Manetti, a renowned 17th-century...
“Sopranos” Creator: The Era Of Quality TV Is Over
David Chase, who wrote the HBO series about the New Jersey mafia that many credit with starting a golden age of television, said that...
Does AI Mean The End Of Intellectual Property?
My right of ownership of some piece of intellectual property bars everyone else from using that property without my consent. I.P. rights have an...
Magic Bullet Syndrome: These Kinds Of Solutions Don’t Exist
If a magic bullet was truly effective in solving this problem, there would be no need for many different proposed solutions. But today, that...
AI Comes For Comic Book Creators
There is a lot of money involved - the global comic book market is worth an estimated $15.5bn (£12.2bn) a year, while the animated...
Spanish Police Make Mass Arrests After Climate Change Activists Assault On Museum
Per police statements, the 22 individuals arrested were linked to 65 climate demonstrations, including halting traffic and flinging paint and other viscous substances at federal...
The Art Market Enters 2024 In A State Of Confusion
Many market players find themselves anxious and confused. There’s a growing fear about gallery closings and collectors dumping art. Younger dealers, who’ve never lived...
Magnificent Obsession: The Man Who Spent Decades Building The World’s Greatest Stereo In His...
Building the world’s greatest stereo would mean transforming the very space that surrounded it — and the lives of the people who dwelt there....
Why Do Museums Focus So Much On Getting Young People, When Older People Are...
Why have museums not been more attentive to older people? Perhaps we feel anxious that the younger generation will not develop a lifelong habit...
The Pittsburgh Symphony Is Playing Well. But The Audience Is Missing. What To Do?
In the fall, the Pittsburgh Symphony averaged about 1,000 listeners per concert, or less than half of the capacity of Heinz Hall. This is...
An Argentine Man Has Spent Two Decades Reviving An All-But-Dead Indigenous Language
His painstaking work with a linguist has produced a dictionary of roughly 1,000 Chaná words. For people of Indigenous ancestry in Argentina, he is...
Trust In Universities Is Plummeting. There Are Good Reasons For That
The most recent debacle at Harvard, in which large swaths of academia seem to have conveniently forgotten what the term plagiarism means so they don’t have to admit...
The Crisis At Substack Is Of Its Own Making
The company wanted to have it both ways: to exert the cultural influence of a major media company without shouldering any more responsibility (or...
Scammers Are Stealing Artists’ Music And Posting To Streaming Platforms
The streaming ecosystem, say critics, is easily gamed. For $20, artists can buy an annual subscription to a music distributor, a company that can...
The Word Tags That Get You To Click On Netflix Shows
The two- or three-word tags, meant to convey the gestalt of a show or movie, regularly help viewers choose a show from the service’s...
“Memorization” Could Force AI Companies To Rest And Start Over
Although it would set generative AI back in the short term, a responsible rebuild could also improve the technology’s standing in the eyes of...
Young Musicians Are Starting To Follow The Taylor Swift Career Playbook
This recalibration of the rules of engagement between artists and labels is also a result of the democratisation of information about the byzantine world...
Why Is Sondheim More Popular Now Than When He Was Alive?
The hottest ticket on the Great White Way at the moment, judging from what people are willing to pay for it, is Sondheim's notoriously...
How Dance Is Taking Up The Cause Of Black Justice
In 2016, David Roussève’s “Enough?” — with an accelerating choreographic phrase danced to a soundtrack of Aretha Franklin — asked whether dance can be...
Theatre Development Fund’s Deeksha Gaur Talks About The Return Of Theatre In NYC
"If we think that our relationship with our audiences is super transactional, that is a dangerous game to play, as we are finding." -...
Why McGill University Is Contemplating Leaving Quebec
The announcement, last October, that out-of-province students would see their annual tuition fees double comes on the heels of repeated government efforts to chip...
The High Life Of The Emmys Is Over
If last year’s combined 191-day writers’ and actors’ strikes, with all the vitriolic exchange between creatives and management, has not convinced you that television’s...
Why It’s So Difficult To Spot Liars
One reason we are such poor lie detectors may be because we tend to believe others are telling the truth more often than we...
AI Is Great At Creating Personalized Children’s Stories For Your Kids. Here’s The Problem…
The main version of ChatGPT has, since its launch last year, been able to write a children's story, but GPTs allow parents—or anyone, really—to...
Proposal For A New Law To Protect Artists From Being Digitally Cloned By AI
If signed into law, the proposal, called the No AI Fraud Act, could curb a growing trend of individuals and businesses creating AI-recorded tracks using...
