Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
City Of Annapolis Asks For Input On Public Art. Then It Got Nasty
Early in December, the Art In Public Places Commission narrowed dozens of submissions to just three and posted them online with a call for feedback. They...
Deadline’s Broadway Top Ten Of 2023
What so much of Broadway did this year: Provide an unflinching eye — and offer at least a modicum of hope — during very...
The Award-Winning Plays Now Banned In Florida
That’s right: in Orange County, Florida, students currently can’t read three Tony Award winners for Best Play, as well as a major work by...
The Real Peril For Elite Universities
They will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their...
The Free Speach Wars Are A Trap
It is worth remembering the vast majority of what we call free-speech issues have little basis in the First Amendment, which only forbids the...
Faculty Have A Plan To Save Harvard
Harvard, the faculty members said, should abandon its practice of taking official positions on political or social issues, as it did during the 2020...
Dezeen’s Ten Best Skyscrapers Of 2023
The Americas dominate this year's list, with three buildings in New York, two each in Vancouver and Sao Paulo and one in Mexico City. The other two come from the...
How 2023 Rewrote Box Office Rules
“When you lose half a year of production, 2024 will be a downturn,” O’Leary says. “We have to be realistic. If any industry lost...
NPR Has No Regrets For Getting Off Twitter
After being labeled “state-affiliated media” and then “government-funded media” by Twitter shortly after Musk took over the company, NPR ceased posting on the social media...
Mining The Culture Wars: Dave Chappelle Outsells All Other Comedians
There’s a gap between the backlash Chappelle generates online and his live shows with legions of fans. Amid this comedy culture war, he’s doubling...
Young People Are Using Libraries More Than You Might Expect
New research released by the American Library Association found that more than half of Gen Zers and Millennials surveyed in 2022 had visited a physical library...
Twin Sisters, Book Editors At Competing Publishers
Such is occasionally the cost of doing business when you work in the same tight-knit industry as your identical twin. Turns out, Jean said,...
Works Of Art That Stood Out In 2023
To take stock of the past year, Artforum asked an international group of artists to select a single exhibition or event that most memorably caught their...
How The Atlanta Symphony Started A Talent Program
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Talent Development Program, established in 1993 to identify and nurture talented African American and Latino music students, began with a...
Why Vinyl Recordings Still Have Commercial Allure
While more than four fifths of recorded music is consumed via streaming, vinyl continues to make a comeback. Sales rose by 11.7% to 5.9...
How Amazon’s Pilot Season Broke TV And Became A Bridge To Streaming Culture
Streaming was offered as an alternative to the traditional TV business model, which had remained largely unchanged for decades. The streamer could also act...
Theatre People Who Passed Away In 2023
The ephemeral nature of the stage is part of its power. Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” compares actors to “spirits” who melt into “thin...
A Billion Birds A Year In America Die Crashing Into Buildings. Architects Are Working...
This year, at least 1,000 birds died in one day from colliding with a single glass-covered building. In New York, which lies along the Atlantic Flyway,...
Open To Change: A Critic Goes Back To A Show And Has An Entirely...
In 2014, I couldn’t tolerate a play that mixed hilarity and monstrousness so shamelessly. But time and history have altered that in me. -...
A Stat That Shows How The US Music Market Is Changing
This year, a record 98 Spanish-language songs made Billboard’s list, and six made it into the top 10. - CNN
Are Superhero Movies Done?
These franchises are spelling their own downfalls. This year has been a prime of example of what happens when a pop-culture movement takes hold...
7300-Year-Old Civilization Discovered On Island Off China’s Coast
They also discovered evidence that the inhabitants developed into a complex society between 5,000 and 6,500 years ago with residential homes, as well as...
Has AI Ended The Voiceover Career?
"For a lot of voice actors, AI has been the canary in the coal mine that we've been shouting about for years." -...
New York Times Sues OpenAI And Microsoft For Using Stories To Train AI
“Defendants’ unlawful use of The Times’s work to create artificial intelligence products that compete with it threatens The Times’s ability to provide that service.”...
Writing Is A Solitary Pursuit? Not Really
Writers not only don’t work alone: they can’t. The key proxy for a vibrant book culture is the little packs they form when things are going well....
