Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Judge Puts The Kibosh On Random House Acquisition Of Simon and Schuster (Not Even...
“The government has presented a compelling case that predicts substantial harm to competition as a result of the proposed merger of PRH and S&S,” Judge Florence...
Growing Concerns About The Environmental Impact Of New Zealand’s Movie Business
“If people knew how destructive the whole business is, they would think twice.” - The Guardian
A Hula Dance Renaissance
Some hula masters are experimenting with the form itself, choreographing dances to nontraditional music, say, or creating longer dramas that address contemporary issues, like...
Remembering The Groundbreaking Lincoln Center Directors Lab
In its 25 years, the Lab welcomed more than 1,600 directors through its doors. It was an enormously popular, productive, and competitive program, and...
Surge In Humanities Enrollment? Berkeley Reports 121 Percent Increase In New Humanities Students
It’s unclear whether this upward shift is unique to UC Berkeley or an indication of a national trend. Arizona State University (ASU) reported a...
End Of An Era: Ninth Moscow Biennale Canceled
This decision does not come as a surprise—ministry officials have prohibited dozens of exhibitions of contemporary art since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February....
Uffizi Closes Because Of Staff Shortages
“It does not escape your intelligence that a closure of this kind, in addition to constituting a loss of income, represents damage to the...
A Conversation With Mikhail Baryshnikov @74
Q: How is your body feeling these days? A: Every day is a new encounter, and they are not always pleasant. - The Guardian
How Early Failure Is Useful For Some Creative People
While yes, there are the Picassos and Portmans of the world, there are also a few famous creatives who had to overcome failure early...
More On Consciousness: Is It Really A System/Network Of Memories?
In a nutshell: at its core, consciousness evolved as a memory system. It helps us remember the events of our lives—the whens, wheres, whats,...
Research: People Dance More When The Bass Is Turned Up
Results from 43 attenders who agreed to wear a headband revealed they moved 11.8% more, on average, when the VLF speakers were turned on....
How Liverpool’s Cultural Organizations Stepped Up During COVID
As government health and welfare services shut down or struggled to adapt to the crisis, cultural organisations stepped in to provide vital support –...
Creating DeepFakes For Good?
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab have been brainstorming ways of putting deepfakes to good use. Some of these are in healthcare and...
Theatre’s Biases About Larger People
"I am a woman performer who wears pant/dress size 10-12. In the eyes of directors, producers, choreographers, and theatre’s other decisionmakers, that means I...
Art Of The Twitter Apology (Ewww!)
Knowing how to apologize on Twitter became crucial to brand management. “It’s easy to say sorry, but knowing how to say it effectively on...
How TikTok Is Changing Not Just Content, But How We Think About The Medium
The overriding focus on the algorithm—and the content it delivers—has caused us to overlook a central part of TikTok’s operating logic: the phone. A...
Activists Attacking Art – Forcing Us To Consider Our Values
By attacking a famous and high-value cultural target like Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring — it even starred in its own movie — the protesters are asking...
The Inimitable Mr. B (A New Biography)
Balanchine is an unusual subject for what critics like to call, and I’ll go there, a magisterial biography. He was a shy, somewhat receding...
The Dreariness Of Book Clubs
I read and write about books for fun. And yet, time and again, my mind goes blank during book discussions, and all I can...
Art As Difficult Conversation? That’s Rather Limiting, Isn’t It?
Art is now viewed as a pretext for collective discourse, raising “issues” that provide the raw material for op-eds, Twitter threads, college seminars, and...
New Orange County Museum Disappoints
With the museum, designed by Thom Mayne, obviously the headliner, OCMA might have shown off its collection as the main exhibition, with perhaps a tangy...
Toronto’s Habourfront Theatre: Exec Director Leaves, Board Resigns, So What’s Next?
Last week, mere days after long-time director Gaëtane Verna left for a bigger job in the United States, board members resigned en masse, saying interference...
David Duchovny, Playwright?
Duchovny has moved fluidly between social circles, careers, and media. He was well into graduate school, preparing the fancifully titled (but never written) PhD...
A Hula Renaissance
Real hula is primal, archetypal, esoteric and ever- evolving. And it’s now shared digitally all over the world. This is a good thing, because...
Time To Get Rid Of Oscar’s Best Foreign Film Category?
Every year, the Academy tweaks the rules, trying to improve the controversial and oft-criticized process by which the international nominees are selected: But they...
