Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Battle Over Redesigning Wikipedia
Some Wikipedia contributors have a hard time trusting Wikimedia Foundation designers. No one on the paid design team was around 12 years ago when...
Canada’s Griffin Prize Decided To Reinvent. Poets Are Furious
The prize’s founder, Scott Griffin, had anticipated some controversy, if not this degree of fury. He maintains trustees made the right call. After twenty-two...
The Downsides Of Super-Fandom
At the end of the day, fandoms are grey areas: on the one hand, they can be a place where you can really belong...
AI Might Doom The College Essay, But Students Have Already Moved On
The current generation of students has moved on from writing. Literally. Most students fail to see the relevance of writing in a world—their world—that...
After Humans Come The “Trans-humans”
Transhumanism emerged as a distinct school of thought in the 1980s, when philosophers, scientists, and artists began to think intensively about how technology might...
Miami City Ballet Gets A New Executive Director
Currently, he serves as the executive director of the National Dance Institute, a non-profit arts education organization in New York that has impacted more...
Lebrecht: Why I Hate Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony
‘Nothing,’ Beethoven once said, ‘is more intolerable than having to admit to yourself your own errors.’ In the Pastoral he lets us into that furtive admission....
What A Decades-Long Study Tells Us About Happiness
Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants the study incorporated the spouses of...
How Supply Chain Issues Are Affecting Artists
When China shut down manufacturing and shipping ports due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many artists felt it before American cities followed suit. Subsequent labor...
Canada’s National Gallery Lays Off Staff As Outside Consultant Makes More Than CEO
The National Gallery of Canada’s interim chief operating officer and human resources director is being paid annual fees potentially worth up to a third more...
An Intriguing Business Model For Presenting Concerts In London
Noisenights are run via a crowdfunding model—events are announced, artists and venues secured, and when audience members buy tickets, they are helping to create a...
Banned From Schools, Afghan Girls And Women Go Online
There were 40 Afghan female students before the Taliban’s takeover back in mid-August 2021. Now there are 382 girls at Rumi Academy amid increasing...
Australian Arts Institutions In Funding Crisis
“We’re not start-ups. We have massive long-term responsibilities. And for that, we really need to have sustainable long-term funding, rather than the short-term injections.”...
Is Asking Smart Questions Actually Kinda Dumb?
Smart Questions are, typically, kind of dumb. And, just as typical, questions that might initially seem dumb or underinformed, or downright unintelligent, are the...
The Ridiculousness Of Trying To Pick Oscar Nominees (And Winners)
Those voters can never quite decide how much heed to pay to a movie’s popularity or accessibility. That’s how you wind up with absurd...
28 States Have Banned TikTok From State Devices. Users Are Rolling Their Eyes
Some tech experts argue that the sudden explosion of the bans, coupled with doubts over TikTok’s actual harm, is more a reflection of government...
The French Have It Right: The Right Not To Be Fun At Work
In another win for workplace dignity, one of the nation’s highest courts recently suggested that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in office...
Sure Students Could Use ChatGPT To Cheat. But Maybe We Should Be Rethinking How...
While there will always be a need for essays and written assignments – especially in the humanities, where they are essential to help students...
Repositioning Culture In Everyday Life (Warning: It’s Radical)
For Herbert Read, “culture” is capitalism’s breaking apart of life and art, and the subsequent fencing off of the poet, the architect, and the...
Expanding The Definition Of Libraries
A makerspace in a small central New York village; a network of food pantries in Canada; recording studios with instruments in the Netherlands; resources...
French Legislature Considers New Radical Laws On Cultural Restitution
In what would be a first, one of the bills also offers an opportunity to legally acknowledge crimes committed against Jews during World War...
Drinking Game: What If Alcohol Was What Sparked Civilization?
What if alcohol was not merely a vice, but one of the triggers that sparked the dawn of human civilization — in essence, the...
Hamline University’s Weird Defense Of Its Art History Controversy
The instinct to treat Muslims like toddlers, incapable of dealing with unwelcome developments, and therefore in need of protection at all times, is powerful...
What Happens When AI Bots Run Out Of Good Writing To Ingest?
A team of researchers led by Pablo Villalobos at Epoch AI recently predicted that programs such as the eerily impressive ChatGPT will run out of high-quality reading material...
US Senate To Hold Hearings On TicketMaster
The hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee will take place Jan. 24, the panel announced late Tuesday, and address concerns that Ticketmaster’s market control over the...
