Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Pittsburgh Symphony Enters Contract Talks With Its Musicians. What’s At Stake:
The musicians’ base salary has hovered at or below $110,000 for about 15 years, with musicians handing over concessions during lean years and market...
US Charitable Giving Declined In 2023
U.S. charitable giving declined by 2.1% to US$557 billion in 2023, but the flow of funds began to stabilize following several years of volatility. -...
Can Chad Smith Reinvigorate The Boston Symphony?
Smith has big plans for Tanglewood, whose Boston Symphony season begins on July 5, just as he has a long to-do list for the ensemble...
Study: Easter Island’s Statue Theory Is Wrong
“Our study confirms that the island couldn’t have supported more than a few thousand people. As such, contrary to the ecocide narrative, the population...
Museum Hangs Picassos In Ladies’ Toilets In Response To Court Ruling
Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art has relegated part of its Picasso collection to a female toilet cubicle, after a court ruling that...
High-End Print Magazines Are Making A Comeback (In A Different Way)
High-end niche periodicals are popping up, but the trend might be most evident in a burst of small-batch, independent outdoors magazines like Adventure Journal, Mountain...
The Future Of Streaming
Profitability depends on how many paying subscribers are needed. There was a time when industry executives hoped that number might be as low as...
Record Labels Sue AI Music Generator Sites
The lawsuit claims Suno and Udio’s software steals music to “spit out” similar work and asked for compensation of $150,000 (£118,200, A$225,400) a work....
Is NYC Government Serious About The Arts?
This year, City Council is asking for an additional $53 million, above a base line that has not much changed to meet the demands...
Paul Allen’s Living Computer Museum Says Goodbye
Allen’s estate, which has been managing and winding down his vast array of holdings since his death in 2018, confirmed to GeekWire that the 12-year-old...
Metaphor? Wax Statue Of Abraham Lincoln Melts In DC Heat
The six-foot-tall statue of America’s 16th president, by Richmond artist Sandy Williams IV, was installed in February on the campus of Garrison Elementary School...
Divvying Up What Will Be Copyright In The AI Era
It seems less important to get into the fine points of copyright law and arguments over liability for infringement, and instead to explore the political economy of...
Why Google’s AI Can’t Be Sued For Libel
Even as tech companies speak of AI products as though they are actually intelligent, even humanlike or creative, they are fundamentally statistics machines connected...
Why Contemporary Opera Isn’t A Good Fit At The Met
It is problematic to foretell who will attend the revivals of modern operas. New York visitors? Somebody who missed it the first season? The...
Internet Archive Forced To Remove 500,000 Books
"In short, Internet Archive transmitted literary works to the entire world while refusing to license the requisite rights from the authors and publishers who...
Quebec Orchestra Chief Quits In Dispute With Music Director
"The general manager is responsible for everything," he insists. If the artistic director doesn't agree, if he doesn't want to collaborate, that's when we...
Disconnections At The Troubled San Francisco Symphony
Salonen had been pushing for the orchestra to do more, not less, to try to forge connections with new audiences. He had become passionate...
Warning Signs At San Francisco Symphony
For the uninitiated, this may seem like merely an intra-classical-music-world squabble, a fight over the esoterica of contemporary music versus old and pampered performers...
TikTok Strikes Back
TikTok also went on offense, sharing for the first time internal documents from years of failed negotiations with the federal government that it says...
Michael Govan’s Plan For LACMA
Govan’s vision for the new LACMA — a nonhierarchical, decentralized “21st century museum” that is flexible and accessible to everyone — is an honorable one. Some art...
Peter Martins: My Life In Ballet
My instructors grudgingly conceded I had some talent but were skeptical I could develop it fully. These doubts forged a quality in me that...
The Growing Importance Of Being Idle
Exhortations toward work as the path to truth, meaning, virtue, and salvation suggest the contemporary valuation of work is—although not universal—more than the legacy...
How MTV’s “The Real World” Pioneered Today’s Reality TV
In many ways, “The Real World” was a great leap forward from the proto-reality ventures of the past. These attempts had ranged from culture-rattling...
Why Does The UK Conservative Party Not Want To Talk Arts And Culture?
The Conservatives state that culture and sport lie “at the core of our national and local identities” and pledge to “support our world-leading creative...
In Praise Of Ambivalence
Ambivalence can be quicksand, slowly swallowing us whole. But some ambivalence, as lyric poetry taught me, is essential to a life. - Poetry Foundation
