Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Toronto’s Fringe Festival Is In Trouble
Behind the scenes, Toronto’s largest theatre festival was struggling. Audience attendance fell below expectations. Fundraising efforts came up short. All that while the festival...
Why The Newsroom Needed(s) To Change
The decline of the newsroom itself is not the same thing as the decline of media, and conflating the two obscures how the newsroom...
Probing The Life (And Deaths) Of Social Media Networks And What Makes Them Work...
In a world where social networks abound, what leads people to try to find new places to hide out, instead of sticking with the...
The Battle (And Calculations) Over Banning TikTok
The president has his national-security advisers, who are expressing concern about what China could do with a technology in the pockets of 150 million...
Round 286: Movie Theatres Want You Back. They’re Upgrading
Many theaters also went into 2020 with thin margins and may have survived only because of federal pandemic relief programs. Now cinemas are spending...
Istanbul’s Priceless Historic Buildings Are Not Ready For Another Earthquake
The massive earthquake that struck near the Syrian border in February killed more than 50,000 people and wrecked half a million homes. Nearly 2,000...
Growing Concern About The DEI Industry
News outlets such as The New York Times and New York magazine are publishing more articles that cover the industry with skepticism. And DEI practitioners themselves are raising concerns...
How The Movie “Alien” Spawned A Horror Universe
Though initially conceived as a cash-in on the popularity of science fiction in the aftermath of Star Wars, Alien grew from a hugely successful...
Its Top Leadership Leaving, The LA Philharmonic Ponders Its Future
Some orchestra members said they were unnerved, too, but others — including those who have lived through such changes before — said they welcomed...
Their High School Canceled Their Play. So Students Raised Money And Produced It Anyway
LGBTQ storylines drew complaints from parents, spurring Carroll High School to cancel “Marian” in February out of concern for students’ safety. But the cast decided...
We Love Stories (And That’s The Problem)
The great breakthrough in human enlightenment was to develop techniques – empirical science – to allow us to grasp the real complexity of the...
Who “Owns” The Classical Past (And Why It Matters)
Contemporary debates about who ‘owns’ the classical past obscure the intellectual role it played in the emergence of modern democracy, and the reasons we...
A New Dictionary Of African-American Language
It is not simply about the words that appear in letters, books, poems and lyrics. It is also about the words that morphed into...
Why Stravinsky’s Music Has Fallen Out Of Favor
Stravinsky, right now, is in freefall. In 2021, few summoned much enthusiasm for an anniversary retrospective that was quickly quelled by Covid. - The...
The Explosive E-Sports Boom Losing Traction With Audiences
Unable to turn a profit, team owners are cutting costs by laying off employees and ending contracts with star players. In some cases, they...
Composer Hans Pfitzner — Lessons From A Conservative Artist In A Time Of Enormous...
It was an era of artistic manifestos, and in 1917 Pfitzner outlined his views in a pamphlet titled The Danger of the Futurists. It was...
The Inexplicable Survival Of The Guinness Book Of Records
Even now, in the age of YouTube and TikTok, when you can catapult yourself into fame, riches and recognition for feats of all kinds...
Vandals Who Attacked Degas In DC’s National Gallery Are Charged
If convicted, Martin and Smith face a maximum sentence of five years in prison as well as a fine of up to $250,000. -...
One Of Van Gogh’s Last Paintings Has Gone Missing (We Think)
For a century after van Gogh gathered flowers and placed them in an earthen vase to paint, the artwork’s provenance could be easily traced,...
The Latest Young Star Conductor
Things are happening quickly — Thomas Guggeis starts as the general music director of the Frankfurt Opera this fall — but he is trying...
Technology’s Vision For An AI-Driven Hollywood
Tech industry players have been selling the promise of a future in which AI is an essential tool for every part of Hollywood production,...
The First AI-Generated Dance
Now it’s ballet’s turn, and a subversive new performance will become the world’s first AI ballet, using generative AI to inspire all aspects of...
Learn To Love Math And You’ll Be Good At It
Typical curriculums fail to imbue children with love and appreciation of maths. This is not teachers’ fault – the education system judges students on...
US Supreme Court Justices Engage In Fierce Art Criticism Debate
Kagan’s dissent was not mild, either—it reads as strenuously as a vintage art-critical piece by, say, Clement Greenberg, slamming Harold Rosenberg—thus producing an image...
Are We Asking Too Much Of Public Art?
It must be said that no work of art interrogates anyone or anything. This linguistic tic is endemic to the art scene and unproductively cliché. The...
