Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Hi, My Name Is Paul. I’m An Audiobook Addict
The audiobook’s ascent into full-blown aesthetic autonomy came with the arrival of the iPod and its MP3 file format in 2001, and, as of...
A Theory On Who Banksy Is
At one time, there was one Banksy who had a graffiti career and a famous “beef” in the subculture with London graffiti legend Robbo. That...
As Canadian Museums Try To Decolonize, Turmoil Ascends
“To a certain extent, all museums are colonial constructions, and some people have argued that true decolonization would require shutting down every single museum...
Branding Your Literary Favorites
Is it the ultimate pairing of the lowbrow (baseball cap) and the highbrow (literature)? Or is it wearing books as one might wear cult...
How Theatre Schools Are Adapting To The Future
Drama school leaders are at the sharp end: the issues experienced by the wider theatre sector often land first in drama schools, in raw,...
Is The Non-Profit Model Unsustainable For The Arts Today?
As the nonprofit world shrivels in importance, mass media consolidates and grows more influential, and its stars grow ever more powerful, as the economic...
The UK Has 1,500 Micro-Cinemas Happily Serving Up Movies
The UK now has 1,500 volunteer-run venues, according to Jaq Chell, CEO of the charity Cinema for All, which supports them with everything from...
Where Our Brains Save Different Kinds Of Memories
"Each time an experience is recalled, there are changes in the connection weights of the network, causing memory elements to get more averaged out....
Why So Many People Feel They’re Stuck In BS Jobs
Simon Walo estimated that 19 per cent of people in the United States believe their jobs are ‘bullshit’ and, for the most part, working in one...
Portland Art Museum Got Rid Of Its Volunteer Docents. Was There A Problem?
Does reflecting the communities they serve mean reducing the role of senior white women, who made up a large proportion of the docent council?...
Is The Internet Less Fun Now?
The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be...
Has The Internet Been Abandoned To Bots?
Under your nose, the Internet of real people has gradually shifted into a digital world of shadow puppets. They look like people, they act...
Why Literary Fiction Might Be Dead
Literary fiction might be dead. More precisely, what might have died is literary fiction as a meaningful category in publishing and bookselling. - The Nation
Chicago Theatre Is In Dire Straits: Reacting To An Alarming Report
“An average audience-goer saw 40 or 50 shows or other cultural arts experiences over the course of a year, prior to 2020, going weekly...
Has Progress In Our Culture Come To A Standstill?
"Today culture remains capable of endless production, but it’s far less capable of change. Intellectual property has swallowed the cinema; the Hollywood studios that...
Brexit Has Been A Disaster For UK Musicians
A recent study "found that 27.8% of musicians have had no work in Europe since Brexit. Nearly half of respondents had seen their work...
UK Labour Party Promises A Different Approach To Culture
“We need to protect the cultural spaces we already have. Everybody knows a pub theatre which is about to close down, or a local...
The Iconic Sydney Opera House – 50 Years Later
On a windy spring day on 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the venue, drawing an estimated 1 million people to the city’s streets....
AO Scott Returns To The Movies. And Ponders The Wreckage Of Streaming
Just as streaming isolates and aggregates its users, so it dissolves movies into content. They don’t appear on the platforms so much as disappear...
High School Advanced Placement Courses Have Failed Us
The damage is familiar to college faculty across disciplines: writing as a form of Frankfurtian bullshit for which it’s more important to be superficially convincing than...
Seeing Cape Cod Through Thoreau’s Eyes
Much of the coastline Thoreau walked on is now under water. The land he saw was a sandy “wasteland” without trees,which had been cut...
Words Aren’t Merely Words. Context Matters, And Words Processed By Machines Are Changed
We are at a moment of disjunction in the history of reading, driven by a technological shift that already seems to be as consequential...
Why Social Networks Die
“These platforms are fundamentally rooted in users being able to get value, not just from the platform but from each other. If the platform...
The Go-To Website For Vinyl Records Is Endangered
Discogs is a fairly clunky, definitely old-fashioned website devoted to even older technology: a vestige of an earlier, more idyllic internet that has spent...
A Way To Revive The Kitchener-Waterloo Orchestra?
“It’s not that there is no money. There’s a lot of money. It’s just that there must be a reason to spend it. To...
