Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Failure To Engage: Thinking About The Future
"Our frayed relationship with the very idea of the future has worried me for some time. It’s healthy for a society not to be...
Legislatures Are Degrading Public Education Before Our Eyes
Politicians and state officials, often with the help of management consultants, are making liberal arts education scarce in some of the poorest states in...
Scientists Are Getting Close To Being Able To See What The Brain Is Thinking....
In theory, nothing about the brain’s squishy wetware prevents its internal states from being observed. “If you could measure every single neuron in the...
Hey – Theatre Kids Are Running The World!
All of these power-adult former theater kids exist in a moment when the very things that used to make drama-loving teenagers an easy punchline...
Oops: Image Metadata On Christie’s Website Inadvertently Revealed Locations Of Artwork
As was the case with the professor, photos uploaded to Christie’s oftentimes include GPS coordinates for where they were taken; those coordinates are so...
A Culture War Pop Song’s Success Signals A Shift In Pop Culture
"The stunning success testifies to potency of confrontational works that cater to an audience that believes it is underserved, but also: the increasing savvy...
Tough Love For Shakespeare Through A Racial Lens
In a sweeping yet forensic 336 pages, “The Great White Bard” argues that “Shakespeare’s texts are a reservoir of what is known as race-making” —...
Is Interest In AI Waning?
For the first time since its release last year, traffic to the ChatGPT website fell by almost 10 percent in June. Downloads of its...
Will Cable TV Survive When ESPN Becomes A Streaming Service?
While the move could fill Disney’s coffers, it would take away one of the key reasons people still stick with cable – access to...
San Francisco Is Trying To Give Away The 40-Ton Organ Sitting Under City Hall
"Despite being in very close to playable condition, the organ has sat in pieces in underground storage near San Francisco City Hall for most...
Is It Strange San Francisco Hasn’t Had A Piano Festival Until Now?
“It seemed strange to me that there wouldn’t be a piano festival in such a major arts city, where there are in places that...
Data Analysis: Where America’s Writers And Artists Come From
If we focus on independent artists — writers and artists who say they’re either in publishing or outside of any defined industry — D.C....
What That Bradley Cooper “Bernstein” Nose Controversy Is Really About
"I am not in sympathy with a view of acting that centers an actor’s identity rather than a character, or with the blanket disqualification...
Alex Ross: Misguided Notions Of Culture At Lincoln Center?
"When people make the trip to Broadway and Sixty-fifth, they surely aren’t looking for an awkward transplantation of cultures that exist in more authentic...
Ted Gioia: Here’s How I Would Fix The Recording Business
"For too long, the record industry has treated artists as adversaries. They have tricked musicians with unfair publishing deals, dubious accounting tricks, and many...
Poll: 67 Percent Of Americans Support Actors, Writers In Hollywood Strike
The poll also found that 48% have an unfavorable view of the major studios, and just 31% support the studios. The survey also found...
NYT Might Sue OpenAI Over Use Of Its Stories
If, when someone searches online, they are served a paragraph-long answer from an AI tool that refashions reporting from the Times, the need to visit...
Ruling On AI-Copyright Has Enormous Implications
The essential question: "Maintaining copyright’s focus on human authorship makes sense only if we can redefine human authorship. - Shelly Palmer
The Leonard Bernstein Biopic’s Nose Controversy
Bernstein's "family released a statement in response to the criticism, saying that they worked closely with Cooper throughout the film's development and were unbothered by...
What Defines Gen-Xers? Music? Movies? Books? What?
The aristocratic regime of my generation, who would not sell out until “selling out” was gutted of any meaning, has collapsed, yet it is...
Lorne Michaels, Cultural Phenomenon
The promise of SNL under Michaels’ leadership is simple: If you are loyal to the family, you will reap handsome rewards. Over almost 50 years, that...
Too Much: The “-Ification” Of Everything
The suffix “-ification” (also “-ization”), usually attached to words that end in “-ify,” describes change, the process of something becoming different from what it...
Blowing Up Cultural Icons – Why Is Our Pop Culture So Obsessed With This...
"It has struck me lately that the recurrent frenzy of destruction of prized objects in popular culture may tell us less about our current...
Try It Out: The National Mall Is Filled With Monuments. Now Six New Temporary...
The curators Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet have asked six artists — three women and three men; three of them Black, one Asian, one...
Study On Creativity: A Creative Dance Between Our Brain Networks
The key finding was that, for the eminent creators, there was a higher connectivity, both within each hemisphere, the right and left, but particularly...
