Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Dame Edna (Barry Humphries), 89
A stiletto-heeled, stiletto-tongued persona who might well have been the spawn of a ménage à quatre involving Oscar Wilde, Salvador Dalí, Auntie Mame and...
Damien Hirst’s AI-Generated Art Project Earns $20 Million
In a nine-day sale that ended on April 10, Hirst sold 5,508 paintings (5,109 physical artworks and 399 NFTs) and generated $20.9 million in...
How Streaming Algorithms Turned My Music-Listening To Sludge
My sludge addiction sprang from Spotify’s algorithmically curated playlists, which promised to help me focus or find music tailored to my tastes. But at...
Big Ears’ Ashley Capps And The Art Of Curating Music
Big Ears started very small in 2009, and very organically. It had been discussed for a number of years and was rooted in a...
Apple’s New Classical Music App Understands Classical
As long as we’re living in a streaming world, we might as well have technology that reflects the specific contours of the classical repertoire....
AI Trains On Banality. So An Opportunity For Human Creativity
As AI proliferates, this lack of originality in our daily language is what will render so many of our jobs irrelevant... It’s clear that...
Book Bans Proliferate Across The US
From July to December 2022, PEN found 1,477 cases of books being removed, up from 1,149 during the previous six months. Since the organization...
The Italian Government’s War On English
Since 2000, the use of English words has shot up by 773% according to data from Italy’s Treccani dictionary. There are now around 9,000 English words...
Is Climate Change Sci-Fi Counter-Productive?
I not only worry that "cli-fi" might not be an effective form of environmental expression – I have come to believe that the genre...
Not So Fast: Santa Fe Contemporary Art Museum Might Not Close After All
In the wake of the April 6 announcement, there has been an outpouring of support from Santa Fe community. Members of the community are...
“Princess” Evicted From Rome House Containing Caravaggio
The US-born Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi was escorted out of the 16th-century Villa Aurora by police on Thursday after receiving an eviction order amid a long-running...
Report: Piracy Costs Streaming Services $113 Billion
By 2027, there is a projected loss of $113 billion for streaming video providers serving U.S. customers due to content theft, according to a...
Has Twitter Lost Its Cultural Relevance?
Musk’s takeover of the platform has not only strained the dinner-party metaphor (a new host comes in and dominates the conversation, demanding money from...
Remembering The Cultural Relevance Of Buzzfeed
I don’t mean to sound self-aggrandizing, but it is legitimately hard to capture the cultural relevance of BuzzFeed to the media landscape of the mid-2010s, and the excitement...
Congress Considers “Tax Fairness” For Performing Artists
Experts estimate that arts workers spend between 20 and 30 percent of their income on necessary work-related expenses, including headshots and management fees. If...
How Does Art Resonate? And Why?
I am partial to having opinions myself, provided they are carefully justified, and I am not convinced that verdicts are always artifacts of incuriosity:...
Oh, Oh: AI-Created Song Featuring Artists We Know Just Became Popular.
This “ghostwriter” is essentially taking the likeness of two artists and creating a song they had nothing to do with. It’s particularly an issue...
New Museum Of Shakespeare To Open In London
It will focus on the culture of London in the 16th Century and the life and inspirations of the famous playwright. - BBC
Egyptians Protest Netflix’s Black Cleopatra
An Egyptian lawyer has reportedly filed a complaint demanding that legal measures are taken to block Netflix outright in Egypt, to prevent the show...
Public Libraries Have Become Battlegrounds
Public libraries—once as popular with libertarian autodidacts as leftists—have become targets of the Republican Party. Local-library systems, and local librarians, are being vilified nationwide...
An AI-Generated “Photograph” Just Won An International Photography Competition. Question: What’s A Photograph Now?
Beyond the rights and wrongs of the images themselves, we should be asking if it is fair that photographers might find themselves losing out...
George Will: Lessons From Declines In College Enrollments
There are powerful, immediate financial incentives to study, say, computer science rather than Victorian literature, but economic incentives only partially explain today’s flight from...
Roundabout Theatre Leader Todd Haimes, 66
As the artistic director and chief executive officer at Roundabout, Mr. Haimes had an extraordinarily long and effective tenure. He led the organization for...
Man Pleads Guilty to Stealing Thumb Of A Terra Cotta Warrior
His lawyer argued in court in 2019 that her client was merely “a drunk kid in a bright green ugly Christmas sweater” who was initially...
Bolshoi Ballet Drops “Nureyev” Ballet After Russian Anti-LGBT Law Kicks In
A law passed in November not only widened an existing prohibition on material considered to promote an LGBTQ+ lifestyle but also restricts the “demonstration” of...
