Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Streaming Has Upended How Writers Get Paid. New Contract Negotiations Will Be Tough
The streaming revolution has upended the old system of compensation. The syndication market for TV shows has all but disappeared, and residuals from movies...
Dallas Morning News Guts Its 19-Year-Old Spanish-Language Paper
Dallas County’s population is 40% Hispanic/Latino (1.05 million people) and 34% of residents speak Spanish at home, according to 2020 census data (though Latinos were also heavily...
Louvre’s Antiquities Scandal Raises Questions About Acquisitions (And France’s Moral Standing)
“Recent events question the quality of acquisition procedures and the functioning of its market. A reaction is necessary to guarantee France’s capacity for influence...
How Turkey’s Ancient Sites Fared In The Earthquake
At the ancient citadel of Aleppo, which was also recently damaged during Syria’s civil war, parts of an Ottoman-era mill collapsed along with parts...
How Robert Wilson Changed The Metropolitan Opera 25 Years Ago
This “Lohengrin,” so radical for the Met at the time, anticipated today’s broader range of directorial approaches there — like Willy Decker’s starkly symbolic “La...
The Terrible State Of The Modern Rom-Com
The connection between love interests, once a central element of the rom-com, has in recent years seemed secondary at best; now it’s actually plausible...
The Shocking Escalation Of Anti-LGBTQ Bills In 2023 In State Legislatures
In 2023, U.S. state legislatures managed to surpass the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were proposed 2022—i.e., what took lawmakers 365 days to achieve...
Pondering Self-Identification Of Race
I wanted to know what percent of all Americans change their race over the span of the panel, what percent of Americans who initially identify as...
What Houston’s Urban Sprawl Gets Right About Housing
It ain’t always pretty, but it is fascinating. As the policy tide turns to the end of single-family zoning and looser housing development regulations,...
Why We Still Need Classic Old Story Ballets
“If it’s lasted more than fifty years, it’s for a good reason. Think Mozart, Beethoven or The Beatles, they’ve stayed with us for a...
A Collector Who Plays His Own Rules
A compact man with a round face, Adam Lindemann, 61, is an unusual character in the art market, combining the passion and obsessiveness of...
NYC’s New Ohio Theatre To Close After 30 Years
The theater, originally known as the Ohio Theater and located off Wooster Street in SoHo, was founded as a nonprofit in 1993, and before...
The Paris Street Artist Who Became Ubiquitous
“I was invading public space with a mosaic of a small character whose role is to invade,” said the artist. A quarter-century later, it...
Art Collectives Were The Next Big Thing. What Happened?
Dreams of collectivity in the financialized and non-financialized zones of the art world have deep roots. But they were usually outside the door of...
Confronting Classical Music’s Burn-Out Culture
By stepping into a conservatory, we are encouraged to maintain packed-out schedules, work beyond the point of exhaustion, and have pristine social media accounts...
How Architects Fixed Geffen Hall’s Acoustics
While getting the sound of the orchestral hall right was a heavy lift, the architects and designers also had to contend with another problem in...
Public Television Is Irrelevant. Let’s Fix It
The time is right to revisit and revise the Public Broadcasting Act. A revised and reauthorized act would identify and direct resources to needs...
Twitter Is Collapsing Because Humans Aren’t Wired To Have That Many “Friends”
The reason the Babel story matters is not that it happened once but that it happens over and over: We Babelize and de-Babelize. The...
Rise Of The Intellectual Influencer Economy
As higher education continues to over-produce PhDs, many have sought an alternative path. This is a new niche of the online info-tainment ecosystem. These intellectual...
Readers Are Just Full Of Pet Peeves About Books
Apparently, book lovers have been storing up their pet peeves in the cellar for years, just waiting for someone to ask. Hundreds and hundreds...
AI Is Pretty Good At Writing Poetry. It Doesn’t Mean Anything
Of course, every Dickinson poem reflects her intention to create meaning. When ChatGPT puts words together, it does not intend anything. Some argue that writings by...
Why Beyonce’s Cultural Heft Exceeds Her Commercial Success
It’s clear that despite her status, in purely commercial terms Beyoncé is not a dominating presence in the music industry, with many artists selling...
Why “Tar” Has Become Something Of A Cult Film
Music, ephemeral in its power over our emotions, is a notoriously demanding discipline, so this film presents exciting possibilities for an exploration of the...
The Tyranny Of Having To Have Stories
Forty years ago, Peter Brooks produced a pathbreaking study, Reading for the Plot, which was part of the so-called narrative turn in literary criticism. Narratology,...
AI Chatbots Will Extend Human Creativity, Not Replace It
There will always be a need for genuine community and human connection, which can be aided by tools like this. We see chatbots being...
