Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How AI Is Helping To Authenticate Artwork
“Our program needs about three days to learn the characteristics from around 700 training images, and less than five minutes to calculate the probability...
How Keith Haring Soared To The Top Of The Art World
The story of Keith Haring’s meteoric rise to international art fame is as good as any such story—thrilling really. - The Easel
European Fine Art Foundation Names New Director After String Of Controversies
She is the fifth director of Tefaf in four years and arrives after a period of controversy at the fair brand. Her direct successor, Bart...
After A Big Broadway Theatre Merger… Big Profits
Taking over ownership of Jujamcyn’s five Broadway venues, including the August Wilson and Walter Kerr theatres – a deal finalised in summer 2023 – pulled...
Why Reference Books Matter
I write today in praise of a third genre that few self-respecting intellectuals admit to reading regularly, though many do: the reference book. - Discourse...
Annals Of Great Editors: The New Yorker’s Katherine White
Perhaps one reason why she was a superb editor is because her personality so completely concorded with the wider cultural understanding of editing as...
Boy Scouts to Sell Art To Fund Sexual Abuse Settlements
The Boy Scouts of America is auctioning off the entirety of its 321-piece art collection, which includes works by Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, and J.C. Leyendecker, and is...
How The Taliban Have Changed Afghani Culture After Three Years
While its repressive attitude towards women’s rights has remained consistent, the Taliban's stance on the preservation of historic sites contrasts sharply with its actions...
The Art Of Daydreaming (It Can Get In The Way)
For some, the delight of daydreaming can turn into a curse: The fantasies become such a successful form of escape that they take over...
The Buildings You Live In Help Shape Your Brain
How do the offices, houses, hospitals, schools, neighbourhoods and spaces that we occupy day to day affect our health? Traditionally, our understanding of how...
The Kinds Of Shows Audiences Are Looking For Now
In a world that’s bleak enough already, feel-good, heartfelt comedy feels like more of a salve; earnest sitcoms seem to counteract the vitriol of...
How Should Traditional Museums Think About Immersive Experiences?
What we found leads us to believe that, when it comes to immersive art, established art museums are stuck between staying on the sidelines of...
Opera Philadelphia’s Big Ticketing Experiment
How the math nets out in the end remains to be seen. Last season’s production of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, for instance, had a higher...
Douthat: Why We Don’t Build Beautiful Buildings Anymore
"We don’t necessarily need to repeal the laws of economics or solve Baumol’s cost disease to build as beautifully as our ancestors once did....
CDs Have Always Had A Flaw. Streaming Could Fix It
The majority of your CDs have probably been downsampled perilously from studio to disc. And streaming has now righted that wrong; we can indeed...
Another Semester Of ChatGPT Havoc At Universities
“If the first year of AI college ended in a feeling of dismay, the situation has now devolved into absurdism." - The Atlantic
Good Investment? I Paid My Kid $100 To Read A Book
My daughter is a whip-smart kid, definitely smarter than I was at 12. But until I resorted to bribery, she’d never read an entire...
The Successful Musician: An AI Advantage
"AI-generated songs lack the fluidity of music created by humans. But musicians who experiment with AI can give themselves an edge in an evolving...
This Fall On Broadway: Bring On The Divas
Theater stages are the diva’s holy playground, where complex characters and powerful performances ask audiences to question their received ideas. A new slate of...
Grade Inflation Has Made Grades Meaningless. Time To Get Rid Of Them
The more elite the college, the more lenient the standards. At Yale, for example, 80% of grades awarded in 2023 were As or A minuses. But...
The Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Extraordinary 50 Years
In the decades since Richard Tognetti became ACO artistic director at just 25, he has amassed some of the world’s most valuable instruments and...
Stanford Is Laying Off Creative Writing Lecturers. The World Protests
Stanford University’s announcement that 23 creative writing instructors will be pushed out of their jobs and replaced has set off a national backlash in...
Major Funder Of London’s National Gallery Expansion Left A Secret Note Inside A Pillar...
The eldest brother, John Sainsbury, despised aspects of the design, in particular the false columns in the foyer. Despite concerted pushback and the fact...
Hollywood — Creator Of Worlds (And Explanations)
We live in the era of the “explainer movie” — a creation like those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Dune ecosystem, Star Wars constellation...
How To Find New Music In The Age Of The Algorithm
Some tastemakers say today’s music scene is a soulless algorithmic wasteland — others say it’s more vibrant than ever. However you find it, don’t...
