Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Hundreds Of Museums Showcasing LA’s Diversity
These museums, hundreds of them, reflect the idiosyncrasies and specialized interests of their founders while offering a window into the ethnic, cultural and historical...
The Seventies: The Decade Taste Deserted
Nostalgic TV programmes often want us to remember the ’70s as the decade that “taste forgot”. They offer up montages of space hoppers, avocado-coloured bathroom...
New York Public Library Appoints New Research Library Chief
Brent Reidy will be responsible for four public research centers — the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building; the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln...
Classical Music And The Terminology Trap
The more you get to know classical music, the more you’ll understand and appreciate the terminology. - The Conversation
When Mail Mattered
Mail mattered then, as it had from the beginnings of the republic through the 1970s, more or less, when the falling price of long-distance...
“My” Dancers?
I started bristling at the commonplace phrase: “my dancers.” And I find it increasingly problematic, especially in light of our woefully overdue national reckoning...
Arts Patronage Has Always Been Messy
What then makes a great patron? Bags of cash, obviously, but what else? The best patrons — the ones you can count on to...
Creative AI May Just Be The Next In A Long Line Of Tools
GPT may be not so much a revolutionary leap forward as another step down a long, well-trodden path. Insofar as it is used for...
Anonymity As Fuel For Renegade Scholarship?
The equation of anonymity on the internet with deviance, mischief and hate has become a central plank in the global war on “misinformation”. But...
Generative AI Will Force Us To Rethink Human Creativity
If a computer system has no intelligence, creativity, or understanding but can mimic these qualities, when does it become a distinction without a difference?...
We Read Them Of Course. But What Actually Makes A Book?
The word “information” predates Gutenberg. But once printing took off and books proliferated, new kinds of books had to be invented to track, organize...
Data: Diversity in The Museum, Gallery And Auction Worlds
For the 2022 edition, we examined representation in U.S. museums and the art market for work by Black American artists, female-identifying artists, and Black...
The Future Of Movie Special Effects
The Avatar sequel comes at a time of great debate in the VFX world about the working environment and treatment of VFX artists in...
“Nutcracker” As Vehicle For Dance Injuries
Accidents in "The Nutcracker" are so common there are injuries named after the ballet. A nutcracker fracture is a foot fracture of the cuboid bone. -...
2022’s Movie Box Office Could Hit $9 Billion — A Healthy Rebound
On the high end, it’s a 22% jump from what Comscore is expecting 2022 to final at, that being $7.4B. This year’s domestic box...
What The Invention Of Photography Has To Teach Us About The Advent Of AI...
In addition to the effects on what to see, cameras brought a new awareness to the nuances of how to see. - Wired
How Mass Cancellations Will Re-order The Streaming Landscape In 2023
The story of the year was undoubtedly HBO Max; Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav made radical changes to the streaming structure and axed many in development, renewed,...
Turbulence At Fractional Ownership Art Fund
Throughout 2022, and at times before, the company has weathered conflicting business strategies, rifts between management and key teams and non-existent human resources practices,...
Milwaukee Symphony Had A Good Fall, But Some Unusual Audience Patterns
"What we’re seeing throughout the entire performing arts sector at least in Milwaukee is people are coming out for the traditions and the pieces...
The 2022 Visual Art World’s Biggest Controversies
2022 was a year chock-full of controversies in our industry as museum masterpieces were covered in mashed potatoes, artists fretted about being replaced by...
The Earth Is Losing Its Memory
How does a billion years go missing? The Great Unconformity has long been a geological mystery, in no small part because it is a...
How Historians Made A Video Game To Better Tell A History
History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding...
Charting The Decline Of Programming On Cable TV
All of the major cable network operators — A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery — have seen annual output...
Hollywood’s New Creative Crisis
The danger of the current moment is a second hollowing: the relegation of even lower-budget productions to commercial oblivion, the ever-widening gap between the...
Revisited: More Sinister Readings Of Classic Poetry
There is hope in these poems, but it’s something made in the face of grim predictions. - The Guardian
