Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How The Brain Calculates Escape
Escape behavior offers useful insight into the brain’s inner workings because it engages nervous system networks that originated in the early days of evolution....
Charting The Rise Of Art For Screens
The shift to screen life has been decades in the making, and generations of tech-savvy artists have been charting those changes. - The Wall Street...
Math – The Core Of The Ideas That Propel Our World
Mathematics belongs firmly within, not outside, the Modernist revolution in art and thought that reconfigured minds and lives. So why would any writer who...
The Nineteenth Century: The Age Of Musical Amateurs
Mozart worked from 1781 as a freelance musician. Beethoven, too, survived on publishers’ commissions and charitable sponsorship. If they had been born two centuries...
How Russia Is Plundering Ukraine’s Art
Ukrainian officials say that Russian forces have robbed or damaged more than 30 museums — including several in Kherson, which was retaken in November,...
How To Win A Literary Prize (Hint: It’s Rigged)
The game is rigged. It is rigged like capitalism is rigged. There is no puppet master, no conspiracy, only a field where advantages, to...
Andrew Litton Talks About Conducting For Ballet
It’s very hard to explain to musicians who don’t know ballet, but “One” is everything to a dancer — even though it may have...
A “Pre-Colonial” Africa Never Existed
The concept of ‘precolonial’ anything hides, it never discloses; it obscures, it never illuminates; it does not aid understanding in any manner, shape or...
How Will Women Conductors Change The Culture Of Conducting?
What is authority as it pertains to conducting? If music itself cannot be gendered, why has the conductor’s role been gendered? - Aeon
Nazi Loot Claim On Van Gogh Worth $250 Million
In 1987 the work was auctioned for £25m, but the heirs of the German Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who owned it until the...
Studies: How Making Theatre Helps You Think
Theater involves “active learning” — getting up on your feet to take in information, rather than merely sitting at a desk. “When you put...
Lessons From Hamline University: Who’s Really In Charge?
Does academic freedom really only mean as much freedom as your most sensitive students can stand, and the careers of scholars in the hands of students...
We Sometimes Forget How Words Evolve
Sentence structure aside, so much of the challenge posed by James’s prose is that words often had different meanings around the turn of the...
Lessons From Hamline University’s Firing Of An Art History Lecturer
Standing up for a religious minority’s right to exist, believe, and worship freely does not mean leaving all your other values at the door,...
City Of Leeds Embarks On Its Own Year Of Culture After Brexit Killed Its...
Leeds 2023 is the “unofficial” city of culture. The city’s official bid to be European capital of culture began about a decade ago but was dashed...
Florida College Goes To War With DeSantis After Governor Appoints New Oversight
In a tweet, Christopher Rufo said the group will seek to a create a new core curriculum, “abolish ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ and replace it...
NYC’s Shed Restructures Its Leadership
“It has become more and more clear to me that, to really take us on to the next chapter, I need to dedicate my...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Loses Top Leadership And Will Restructure
OSF has recently been trying to offset deficits from the pandemic’s impact, including reducing its number of shows each season, shortening its calendar for...
Mellon Foundation Picks A New Arts Program Officer
Stephanie Ybarra joins Mellon following her tenure as Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage, where she broke ground as the country’s first Latina artistic...
What Daniel Barenboim Accomplished In Berlin
In Berlin, the former-musical-prodigy-turned-artistic-director increasingly became a cultural politician. In keeping with his self-image, he found his equals at the federal (rather than the...
The Meritocracy? It Doesn’t Exist. It’s All About Networking
The experience had clued him in to something: In elite circles, not all opportunities were advertised. There were rooms that the rest of us...
The Golden Globes Still Have A Long Way To Go To Redeem Themselves
In the end, the Globes had to make three arguments Tuesday: that it has survived its past scandals to become a better organization; that...
Tracking A Precipitous Decline In Innovation
Across broad landscapes of science and technology, the past is eating the present, progress is plunging, and truly disruptive work is hard to come...
Is Campus Free Speech Really Dead?
Are thought, argument, and debate really dying? The picture painted in the media is of a horrified, unqualified yes. But it’s a big country...
The Play About A New York Apartment Developed In A New York Apartment
A parade of well-known actors participated in the readings on Riverside Drive along the West 80s, including John Leguizamo, Ellen Burstyn and Chris Rock,...
