Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
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...
Riccardo Muti Reflects On America As He Completes Chicago Symphony Tenure
"In my life, thanks to Philadelphia and Chicago, I’ve been to Wichita, Des Moines, Ames, Toledo… For me, to make music, it’s not that...
How AI Could Actually Improve How Students Write
If and when machines can “write essays” that are more deftly organized, more thoroughly researched, and more persuasive than our student’s efforts, then...
Performance Space New York’s Jenny Schlenzka Steps Down
Her most radical initiative was “02020,” a plan to hand over the programming, the keys to the building and the entire annual production budget to...
Does Gamifying Reading Help?
Reading has always been a very personal thing. Now, however, I have a little percentage tracker on my home page, Goodreads friends applaud my...
London’s West End Has Musical Theatre Problem
The problem is historic: because this area has been underdeveloped for years, the UK doesn’t have a strong path for shows to follow, and...
San Antonio Lost Its Symphony Orchestra. But Its Musicians Have Played On
The Symphony musicians formed the SA Phil almost immediately after their orchestra died, and their entire first season has been a rallying cry for...
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1988 Manifesto For The Musical Theatre
Through Phantom, Lloyd Webber presented an argument for the destiny of musical theater itself. The operatic tradition had always been divided over the relationship between music...
Apple’s Turn To Address Classical Music Meta-data
The problem was the way that classical music is categorized. The structure of classical music is completely different from pop music’s, which makes it...
What Archaeologists Are Learning About Notre Dame After The Fire
Allowed to delve into the structure’s innards as never before during the ensuing reconstruction (which is set to finish in 2024), a team of...
Publishers Versus Libraries Versus Readers Of Digital Books
After a brutal decline following the Great Recession, print-book sales are up 33 percent in the past 10 years. If the high costs and complexity of...
Trump Claims A Song Featuring Him Is Topping The Charts. Is It Really?
“The J6 is beating Taylor Swift,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday, two days after the rally. “It’s Donald Trump and the...
That Time A Couple Walked Into A Gallery… And Stole A DeKooning
In 1985, a couple walked into an art gallery on the campus of the University of Arizona and left 15 minutes later with a...
