Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Reimagining Rave Culture
There’s no strict definition for what constitutes a rave, but in the past the word connoted an underground gathering, usually at some kind of...
The Privilege of Anger
Arguments for anger tend to frame themselves in terms of empowerment: in the face of oppression, we should not feel grief, sadness, or fear—we...
Cory Doctorow: Why I Don’t Produce My Audiobooks On Audible
None of my audiobooks are. Audible, the Amazon division that controls about 90% of the audiobook market, won't carry them because, if you want...
Why Remote Work Won’t Kill Cities
There’s this long history of certain people seeing urban life through the lens of decline. If you look at contemporary usages of this idea...
Fifty Years After He Died, This Is What Picasso Has Become
It’s no longer necessary that he connect in people’s minds with any actual art. It’s enough that he stands for that bigger thing: unfettered...
The Painting In The TV Room (AKA The Breughel) Sells For $850K
Yes, the family had long called it “The Bruegel,” but it was an affectionate dig at a painting that was clearly a fake. Turns...
Giant 225-Ton Landscape Art Relocated Across Washington DC
Six years ago, the National Geographic Society, decided that the sculpture, known as “Marabar” and designed by the artist Elyn Zimmerman, was in the...
Is Dudamel The Right Music Director For The New York Philharmonic?
Norman Lebrecht: "Bernstein was music director for a record 11 years. His successors were doomed by comparison. Pierre Boulez was too ascetic, Zubin Mehta...
Where Is The Line When It Comes To Revising Classic Novels?
As revelations emerged in recent weeks that the estates of several revered literary figures are altering portions of well-known works, the questions of whether,...
UK Regulator Warns Broadcasters About Use Of Deepfakes
While acknowledging “there are clear benefits to broadcasters” from the use of deepfake technology such as the potential to increase audience engagement, the regulator...
Remember Tetris? How It Swept The World And Continues To Fascinate Decades Later
Less familiar is the true story of how a prototype created in 1984 by a software engineer for the Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences...
Disney, Entertainment Execs To Testify In Congress About China Ties
Disney and other studios have been criticized by lawmakers for self-censorship of movies as a way of gaining entry into the Chinese marketplace. - Deadline
Why Diversity Efforts In UK Arts Aren’t Making A Difference
The creative industries remain fundamentally white spaces. The latest 2020/21 report found that the diverse workforce in its national portfolio of organisations was 14%. This...
Empress Of The Nile: The Remarkable Archaeologist Who Saved Ancient Artifacts From A Dam
In the early 1960s, Lynne Desroches-Noblecourt’s friendships and grit proved essential to the success of her career’s crowning achievement: the seemingly quixotic campaign to...
Alberto Ibarguen Stepping Down From Running The Knight Foundation
While Knight continues to support journalism programs, Ibargüen has added the arts as an increasingly prominent part of its funding mix — from essentially...
Russian Artists Now Shunned By The West Are Heading To China
China, with its legions of concertgoers and skepticism of Western ideals, has emerged as an attractive market for Russian artists aligned with Mr. Putin. -...
How Many Songs Are Released As Recordings Every Day?
In 2019, Spotify claimed that 40,000 tracks were added each day to its platform. And by 2021, the number increased to 60,000. But last...
The Science of Music That Makes You Happy
In a recent survey, 71% of 2,000 participants reported that music was the strongest influence on their mood and almost 75% regularly listened to music...
Italian Court Stops Puzzle-Maker From Reproducing Famous Leonardo
Ravensburger was brought to court by the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, where the real Vitruvian Man lives. The museum claimed that it was owed financial compensation...
Aesthetics As Data (Slave To Measurement?)
Where Quantitative Aesthetics is really newly intense across society—in art and everywhere—is in how social-media numbers (clicks, likes, shares, retweets, etc.) seep into everything as...
Reconceiving “New York, New York” Around Its Dance
Like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse before her, Susan Stroman is a director-choreographer who should really be called a choreographer-director. In this show, “we...
How Atlanta Theatres Are Struggling To Recover
According to the letter, “coupling lower than average attendance with the fact that arts funding is the smallest fraction of philanthropic giving means that...
Robert Falls On American Theatre As He Leaves The Goodman
"I remain optimistic that the theatre has been around for a long time, and it’s going to continue. I just feel that way. There’s...
Please Please: Are We At The End Of Hollywood’s Superhero Obsession?
So far, this year's two superhero releases, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, have underperformed at the box office and received...
Apple’s New Classical Music App: Embracing Idiosyncrasies
Apple has turned classical music’s diversity of metadata into the new app’s raison d’être. And, with so many of what Apple calls “data points”—over 50...
