Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Osvaldo Golijov: After A Decade Fallow, He Returns With New Music
"It’s not like I didn’t attempt; I couldn’t finish a thought. I would begin something and then stop halfway because I’d think it was...
Lessons From The James Corden Affair: Likeability Is Oh So Fragile
Likability has always been important in talk-show hosts, but balanced by other virtues like creativity, funniness, political or even journalistic insight, the ability to...
The New Geffen Hall: More Intimate, Friendlier
The presentation demonstrated a greater use of theatrical lighting, improved amplified sound, and video technology in what had been a temple to un-enhanced instruments. David...
Philadelphia Museum Of Art Workers’ Tense Return To Work After Strike
While some union members described cold and awkward interactions with management, others had more positive anecdotes in which middle managers were excited at their...
Feeling Trapped By The Nonbinary Gender Brand
We got stuck with this particular version of nonbinary identity—singularly focused on pronouns, clumsy corporate integration, and iconoclastic affect—because nonbinary identity has become a...
Meet Italy’s New Minister Of Culture: He Wants To Shake Things Up
Citing 19th Century patriotic poetry and Mussolini-era writers and philosophers, the freshly appointed culture minister of Italy’s new right-wing government has promised a new era...
How “Strictly Come Dancing” Is Changing How People See Dance
With this year being hailed as the most diverse series ever, Strictly is attempting to better reflect the diversity that exists across the British population...
A Linguist Weighs In: Just How Do You Say/Spell Ukraine’s Capital?
‘Kiow’ and ‘Kiou’ seemed to be the most common terms in the 18th century, while ‘Kief’ was the most popular word at the turn of...
A Jobs Crisis In The Arts? Here’s What The Numbers Say
In the arts, entertainment, and recreation industry grouping, the job vacancy rate was 6.8% in March 2022, double the rate before the pandemic (3.4%...
Nope, Sorry. Cooperation Isn’t Always A Good Thing
We often talk about cooperation in glowing terms, associating it with ideas of virtue and morality. But viewing cooperation solely as a force for...
The News Is Broken. It’s Not Going To Get Better
I am learning to accept that our mainstream media will not adapt to the needs of this moment in our public life. Having talked...
Opera Company In Turmoil? Fort Worth Opera Loses Another General Director
Afton Battle, one of the few Black women to ever run a U.S. opera company, is resigning from the Fort Worth Opera. She will...
Why People Misspeak
This word substitution – and thousands like it – suggests that our mental dictionaries link words with related meanings. In other words, semantic connections...
Alex Ross: The Acoustics Of Lincoln Center’s Geffen Hall Makeover
My initial impressions, after three performances, were mixed. The sound is bright and clean, with excellent separation of instrumental voices. When the entire ensemble...
Theatre-Seat-Maker-To-The-Stars
“If a seat’s good, you don’t notice it,” he said. “You only notice it when it’s bad.” In the world of theater seating, he...
Czech Conductor Libor Pesek, 89
Pesek was a Czech conductor with a solid if unspectacular career when in 1987 he was appointed chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic...
David Remnick: Remembering Peter Schjeldahl
Peter was a man of well-developed opinions, on art and much else. He was someone who, after being lost for a time, knew some...
The Alluring Aroma Of Old Books
There are old books and there are old books. Sometimes opening one that I have innocently purchased for 3.99 plus postage can feel like...
Calculating The Moral Value Of The Distant Future
Unless you think—and some philosophers do think this—that the large-scale future consequences of our practices don’t matter at all, it’s hard to see how...
Reconsidering The Music Groupie
The argument for me as groupie is more complex than the definition of the term. Groupies were women who hung around bands. They were...
Audiences For TV Soap Operas Are Falling Off
One of soap operas' major problems in recent times has been a failure to bring in new fans on top of their existing ones....
Fear Of Cancel Culture Makes Me Wonder…
The experience made me wonder: Why do we assume that cancel culture is a pervasive reality, and what’s the impact of that assumption? - The Atlantic
Why Aren’t Dallas Audiences Returning After COVID?
Audiences are being more selective, according to researchers and arts leaders across the region. Some are scared to gather in crowded indoor venues. Others...
Why Peter Schjeldahl Mattered As A Critic
Schjeldahl was a belletrist as a writer — a once fashionable, now vaguely disreputable genre of fiction, poetry and essay writing with an acute concern for...
When The Stories We Tell About History Change… An Existential Crisis
Though the true past is fixed and unrevisable, stories about that past are not. Palaeontologists understand these stories as theories, but their audiences often...
