Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Determining Cultural Quality In The Age Of Massive Data
As Van Dijk has observed, in our digital society, evaluation of cultural products has become synonymous with crowd evaluation. On websites or in newspapers...
The Trap Of Being Over-Informed
The demand to “stay informed” creates and nurtures that feeling of helplessness. By now, it’s common knowledge that social media is exquisitely crafted to...
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra Takes To The Road In Europe In Daunting Tour
The logistics of international orchestral touring are formidable at the best of times. But the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s tour is probably going to set...
Police Warn Of “People Pretending To Play The Violin
When the reporters approached him and asked about his performance, a woman sitting beside him said they didn't speak English. As the man was...
Mariinsky Appoints New Principal Guest Conductor
The Austrian-Iranian Alexander Ali Rahbari took to Instagram to announce the news stating that he was appointed by Putin supporter Valery Gergiev and will conduct 10...
Smithsonian Works On Ethical Collecting (And Demonstrates How Problematic It Is)
As Smithsonian officials celebrated the deaccessioning of works held by its African Art museum, they ignored another 21 Benin sculptures in the collection of...
How Books Are Manufactured
Here, we will show you how vats of ink and 800-pound rolls of paper become a printed book. - The New York Times
This Year’s Booker Prize Longlist
The list is described as “challenging, stimulating, surprising, nourishing” by the chair of judges, contains the youngest and oldest authors ever to be nominated...
Why New York Galleries Are Flocking To LA
The Los Angeles gallery scene is seeing an influx of established New York art galleries moving into town as of late — 11 so...
Gopnik: Remembering Claes Oldenburg
Oldenburg had his avant-garde moment. One of the three saints of the first rise of Popism in the United States, alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, he...
Norman Lear Is 100 Today. He Reflects On Archie Bunker And Today’s Politics
"It is remarkable to consider that television — the medium for which I am most well-known — did not even exist when I was...
Bait And Switch: Moshe Safdie Designed A Huge Development For Toronto. Then He Was...
For a year, Mr. Safdie was the public face of a building project over the rail corridor in the middle of Toronto’s downtown. This...
Two Louvre Archaeologists Questioned In Widening Art-Trade Scandal
Jean-François Charnier and Noëmi Daucé are suspected of ignoring warnings about the questionable provenance of at least two allegedly stolen Egyptian antiquities worth millions,...
Ukrainian Artists In Occupied Ukraine Document The War
When it became too dangerous to meet in person, the artists continued to work individually. Some have since escaped the city but others remain,...
TicketMaster Dynamic Ticket Pricing Has Springsteen Fans Crying Foul ($5,000?)
To be clear, no scalpers were selling those tickets. Instead, a new definition of face value had emerged, one that many fans had never...
Quebec’s Plan To Help Theatres Rebuild After COVID
The challenge for larger companies like Stratford, which depend heavily on earned revenue, is how to afford to operate at partial attendance as they...
Julius Eastman Is Finally Getting His Moment
Julius Eastman: the fierce black queen iconoclast, scorned and consigned to oblivion in his day, is finally being celebrated for his unabashed talent and...
Is America Ready For Arab Pop Music?
From Timbaland to Sting to the next rapper to say inshallah, Arab culture has been a persistent influence on American music. But songs actually in Arabic have never...
Growth Of The Non-Profit Industrial Complex
Today, they comprise the third largest sector of the U.S. economy: well over 1.5 million nonprofits employ roughly 12.5 million people as of 2017, the latest...
Oh Yes, Medieval Europe Was Chock-a-Block Full Of Conspiracy Theories
This process transformed improbable rumors into seemingly solid facts, backed by evidence from different sources and accepted by political and religious leaders. - Lapham's Quarterly
Why Has Our Aesthetic Choice Been Captured By Algorithms?
Why can it feel as though the entire ecosystem of content that we interact with online has been engineered to influence us in ways...
Do We Overrate Human Intelligence?
We humans are besotted by intelligence, especially our own. And yet “intelligence is not the miracle of evolution we like to think it is. -...
Russian Culture Has Been Canceled In Russia
The Putin regime has dealt Russian culture a crushing blow, just as the Russian state has done to its artists, musicians, and writers so...
We Live In The Age Of The Constant High
We need not consume drugs or get inebriated to be met on a daily basis with sights and behaviours to which the only reasonable...
Experiencing History Of A Place Through Augmented Reality
The project aimed to invite Nottingham’s citizens and tourists to experience and interact with the historical roots of the city through virtual archaeology, using...
