Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Want To Be Wildly Successful? Fail. A Lot
Far from being an occasional exception, failure is an inherent part of human life. - Hedgehog Review
Louise Bourgeois Spider Sells At Auction for $33 Million
Only four of the French-American artist’s arachnid creations have ever appeared at auction. In May 2019, another sold for $32.1 million with fees at...
Meet The Chicago Symphony’s Music Librarians
The orchestra "owns more than 5,000 sets of scores and parts, some dating back a half century or more, with even older ones...
Hearing Aids Help Clarify Speech. Music? Not So Much
Much of the research indicates that it can take years for the brain to adjust to the new mode of input via hearing aids....
Hi! We’d Love To Publish Your Book. But Could You Take Out Any Reference...
In what Maggie Tokuda-Hall described as a “Faustian bargain,” Scholastic made the offer contingent on removing mentions of the Japanese American incarceration that tied...
Artificial Intelligence? Let’s Think For A Moment Beyond That
How would we deal with artificial beings with rich capacities for thought, experience, and feeling? What are our obligations to them? What of their...
Yup — Using Big Words Doesn’t Make You Sound Smarter
“Complexity neither disguised the shortcomings of poor essays, nor enhanced the appeal of high-quality essays.” In other words, George Orwell got it right: “Never...
US Surgeon General Says Social Media Is “Profound Risk” To Youth
The surgeon general called on policymakers, tech companies, researchers and parents to “urgently take action” to safeguard against the potential risks. - The New...
Philly Pops Updates Lawsuit Against Philadelphia Orchestra, Kimmel Center
In April, the Pops filed an antitrust lawsuit claiming the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center used tactics intended to force the company out of business and create a...
In Several US State: Lend A Book, Go To Prison
Some of the laws impose severe penalties on librarians, who until now were exempted in almost every state from prosecution over obscene material —...
UCLA Picks A Local Star To Run Its Center For The Art Of Performance
An Angeleno who emigrated from Mexico at age 8, grew into a first-generation college student and climbed his way through the ranks of the...
Maureen Dowd: Classical Music Is Sexy!
“Let’s not forget that the word ‘climax’ is a common musical term,” the soprano Renée Fleming told me. “It has to do with musical...
Why Naked Standup Comedy Is Finding An Audience
The most surprising aspect of “The Naked Comedy Show” might be how asexual it is. The audience is meticulously polite, quick to laugh. The...
The Dizzying Downfall Of An A-List Art Advisor
In a dizzying fall from grace, Lisa Schiff was accused by a close friend and client of running a “Ponzi scheme” and misappropriating millions of...
Some Numbers: College Enrollment Slide To Tech, Away From Humanities
The number of students nationwide seeking four-year degrees in computer and information sciences and related fields shot up 34 percent from 2017 to 2022,...
Why We Like Sad Music
This is the paradox of sad music: We generally don’t enjoy being sad in real life, but we do enjoy art that makes us...
How Fear And Opportunism Is Fueling Book Bans
What I find most fascinating about the lawsuit, though, is the glimpse it offers into how national and state-level political dynamics empower the most...
The Differences Between Public Media Radio Listeners And Digital Subscribers
What’s resonating here is the idea of an “always on” membership experience, rather than just pledge-style experience in digital. - Medium
How Seattle Arts Organizations Are Trying To Be More Sense Accessible
Many of the more recent changes in local arts organizations were sparked by the pandemic, which shone a spotlight on society’s inequities, as well...
Mythology Of The “Dark Ages” Belies Actual History
Today, all serious historians and archaeologists acknowledge that the cross-fertilization of “Western” and “non‐Western” cultures happened throughout human history, and that the modern West...
Bay Area Children’s Theatre Suddenly Closes
The abrupt closure comes less than three weeks after the theater, known for adapting beloved books into short musicals and for devising dance parties...
The Future Of Novels Written With AI Tools
Working with ChatGPT, an author inputs a prompt request and can choose from an infinite number of outputs. If you don’t like a paragraph...
World’s Largest Publisher Sues Florida School District Over Book Bans
Joined by free-speech advocacy group PEN America and several authors and parents, Penguin Random House filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the Escambia County School District and its...
New AI Bot Can Analyze A Book In Seconds
To demonstrate how this improves the AI's performance, Anthropic loaded the entire text of The Great Gatsby (72,000 tokens) with one line modified from...
An Agreement On The Parthenon Marbles?
“I would just say that we are, without changing … our fundamental position about the ownership of the sculptures, we’re trying to explore a...
