Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
A Stolen Art Expert Talks About The Louvre
The main takeaway, for me, is that museums have a vulnerability—a technical, physical vulnerability—that is mirrored by the vulnerability of the public’s reaction, the...
Inside The Emptying Out Of The Pompidou Centre
It felt like visiting your childhood home stripped of its furniture — intimately familiar yet deeply disorienting. How would Paris get through five years...
How Audiobooks Infiltrated My Reading Habits
Like many audiobook devotees, I’m sheepish about my conversion, which seems blasphemous for a writer at the Book Review. I wonder whether listening “counts” as...
The Most Influential Theatre Of The Past 25 Years
This is not a “best of” list. What we asked hundreds of theatre folks to do was send us 10 titles they felt had...
Floods Of Music: AI Swamps The Music Market
While the technology quietly reshapes the industry, the first-order effect of AI’s ease of use is simply the existence of more music—a lot more....
Pirate Group Says It Copied All Of Spotify’s Catalog
The world’s largest music streaming service has been scraped by a pirate activist group. According to a blog post from Anna’s Archive, it says it gained...
American College Theatre Festival Quits The Kennedy Center After 58 Years
The theater festival involves collegiate theater students from across the United States, and includes eight regional competitions that have long culminated in a week-long...
The Case For A National Theatre In The US
In the Abbey’s century-long history as a public institution lies a persuasive story about what a national theater could have done—or still might do—for...
The Psychology Of Fashion
Much of the sculptural, breathtaking artistry of haute couture finds a way to dramatize the friction between the composed selves we offer the world...
What The Arts Could Learn From The Data Revolution In Gambling
Not long ago, many online casino experiences were built around flashy graphics and simple luck-based mechanics. Today, game development has become a sophisticated data-informed...
Death Of The Dictionary?
Like the rest of the analog world, legacy dictionaries have had to adapt or perish. - The New Yorker
Is The Reason Our Culture Seems Stagnant Because… Lack Of Critics?
If someone has spent years of their life on a work, they deserve a serious, sustained response. Critics who write such reviews aren’t just...
Europe’s Approach To Developing AI Is Deeply Different
The differences between Europe and the United States when it comes to AI regulation aren’t so easy to fix; they’re rooted in deep cultural differences that have informed how the tech industries...
Might AI Help Us Unlock More Creative Ideas?
Generative AI will indeed make many tasks easier and quicker to perform, increasing efficiency and decreasing costs. But we think that one of the...
How Might One “Fix” Or Reinterpret Historically Racist Statues?
As some political leaders double down on the old memorial language, they ask: What if we thought of our memorials as works in progress,...
What If The Audience Prefers AI-Written Books?
I can write a book for my own reasons, but I can sell the book only if readers like it more than what they can get...
Broadway’s Record Box Office In 2025 Still Doesn’t Keep Up With Costs
“It’s just so difficult for (producers) to get their money back. These shows are now upwards of $25 million. Ten years ago, you could...
Trump Officials Threaten Smithsonian Funding Over Content Review
“Funds apportioned for the Smithsonian Institution are only available for use in a manner consistent with Executive Order 14253 ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to...
The Best Design And Architecture Of 2025
This year’s highlights include the remodeling of a Richard Seifert brutalist ‘corncob’ tower, a celebration of Japanese carpentry and a wearable hot-water bottle. -...
How Regulation Tamped Down Montreal’s Legendary Nightlife
The history of Montréal’s night-time regulation reveals how managing nightlife expanded police power and budgets — and how burdensome effects of these changes fell...
Why Music Needs Its Dissonance
Music has a variety of “jobs,” as the other arts do. It can calm, soothe, and delight. It can also provoke, disturb, bite. No...
Has The UK Fallen Out Of Love With Non-Fiction?
A recent report from NielsenIQ found that trade nonfiction sales have slipped sharply. In volume terms, the category is down 8.4% between last summer and the...
We Used To Have One Version Of History. Now It’s Messier
Unity, cohesion, and a sense of epic narrative have been lost. Freedom, pluralism, sensitivity, and a respect for difference have been gained, and, overall,...
Why Rational Behavior Might Not Be The Best Model
Behavioral economics has identified dozens of cognitive biases that stop us from acting ‘rationally’. But instead of building up a messier and messier picture...
Today’s Challenge For Writers: Don’t Write Like AI
Increasingly, both professional writers and everyone else is facing a new, unwelcome constrained writing challenge: don’t sound like AI. - ArtsHub
