Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
US Supreme Court Rules Against Warhol In Copyright Case
The case, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, No. 21-869, concerned the limits of the fair-use defense, which allows copying that...
As Another Round Of News Organizations Shut Down, What’s To Become Of Our Media...
As the ice floe keeps shrinking, watching the cycle play out feels increasingly grim. Online, writers and editors trade condolences, often in lieu of...
The Ethicist: Is A Colorblind “Fiddler On The Roof” Cultural Appropriation?
As I’ve argued before, the habit of reducing the complexities of identity and culture to a matter of ownership is an artifact of our own...
A Month After It Closed Down, Santa Fe’s Center For Contemporary Art Reopens
It was the shuttering of an art space that served Santa Fe for over four decades. Five weeks later, with a board member-initiated fundraising...
Ghost In The Machine: What Andy Warhol Understood About Computers And Art
He was one of the first who saw machines had something to offer to the artistic process. The artistic technique for which Warhol became...
Saudi Arabia Swings For The Culture Fences — The Complicated Blockbuster Pompidou Deal
The comparison for the Pompidou project is the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In that landmark 2007 deal, the UAE paid France €1 billion for a...
How Musical Hooks Embed Inside Your Brain
Much of modern pop could be described as a hook-delivery device: ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga or ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift, for...
Podcast Producer PRX Cuts 10 Percent Of Staff, Blaming Declining Sponsor Income
With a roster of 124 active shows, PRX has been a steady, albeit low-key, podcast publisher. It had nearly 6.6 million unique U.S. listeners...
On The Internet No One Knows You’re An AI
If a computer system can write code—as ChatGPT already can—then it might eventually learn to improve itself over and over again until computing technology reaches what’s...
The Art Of Collecting: Heroes Or Plunderers?
As long as objects have been plundered, countries have called for their repatriation. Yet western popular culture has muted these voices, sometimes expressing anxiety...
Philosophers And Their Obsession With Language
In the 20th century, Western philosophy split into two discourses, each with its own canon and jargon, usually referred to as ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’. Mastering...
Donald Runnicles Closes Out Two Decades With The Atlanta Symphony
Undoubtedly, there will be great guest conductors in our future. But Runnicles created his own two-decade golden age of Atlanta Symphony history, one that...
The Moral Ambiguity Divide: How Gen Xers And Millennials See The World
While Gen Xers grew up with the moral gray areas and disdain for authority, Millennials were raised on Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, neither of which would...
There Was That Moment Computers Started Beating Humans At Chess. Now They Will Start...
We’re living a new, much broader Deep Blue moment, when the basic boundary lines between the outer limits of what machines and humans can...
The Arts’ Power To Influence Behavior To Address Climate Change
Diego Galafassi, who researches the role of the arts in sustainability, argues the arts can foster the disposition and imagination required to address the climate crisis. Arts activities...
The Art Of Blurbs (Ads In Hiding)
Blurb, then, is a twentieth-century euphemism for a particular kind of advertisement, one that uses evaluation as a figleaf for a sales pitch. In...
Chicago Opera Theatre Appoints New General Director
Lawrence Edelson founded American Lyric Theater in 2005, building a model organization for presenting and fostering new opera. He also recently concluded a successful...
Striking Writers Focus Anger On Netflix
Demonstrations over the past week have underscored just how much writers have soured on the company. In Los Angeles, Netflix’s Sunset Boulevard headquarters have...
Illinois Legislature To Consider Ban On Book Bans
As per the bill, the $62 million of funding that goes to the state’s libraries will only be eligible for said funding if they “adopt...
The Differences Between Non-Fiction In The UK And Non-Fiction In The US
At least on the face of it, the mainstream of US nonfiction is stately, thorough, chronological and substantial; whereas British nonfiction is slant, whimsical,...
Los Angeles Opera, Post-Placido Domingo
“By most criteria, other than audience attendance, the company is in significantly better shape than it’s been in its 38-year history." - The New...
Google’s AI Will Likely Be Quite Boring
As the company moves the technology into more of its products, perhaps the generative AI revolution will turn out to be a lot less...
Hollywood’s Luddites
The Luddites were not some group of fanatics trying to slow the march of history. They were workers trying to protect their livelihood from...
Streaming Music’s Big Bot Fakes Problem
Fake streaming is an industry-wide problem that goes beyond AI-made music. A French study found that between 1 and 3 percent of all music streamed across various...
How We Know What We Know
Simon Winchester worries “that today’s all-too-readily available stockpile of information will lead to a lowered need for the retention of knowledge, a lessening of...
