Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
So Far, While The US Government Is Cutting Arts Funding, States Are Maintaining Theirs
“We’re in an uncertain fiscal environment for state governments overall, but it is encouraging to see that 29 states increased their funding for their...
Senate Hears Authors Protesting Wholesale Ingestion Of Their Work By AI Companies
“Today’s hearing is about the largest intellectual property theft in American history,” Sen. Josh Hawley said. - Washington Post
Universal Music Files For A $500M Public Share Offering
UMG and Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square have an agreement that Pershing Square can request UMG to list in the U.S. if it sells at...
As Broadcast Audiences Decline, Should Broadcast Shows Be Easier To Find On YouTube?
The UK government should intervene to make public broadcaster (PSB) content easier to find on YouTube, the regulator has urged, as it gravely posits...
What To Make Of Dave Hurwitz’s Classical Music Schtick?
Who knew that it was possible to talk in this educated but roughhouse way about Mozart, star sopranos, Herbert von Karajan? Or that the...
Easy To Assume What Happened At CBS With Colbert
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles—it’s big fat bribe,” he...
We’re Living Longer. But Our Living Hasn’t Caught Up
Our lifespans have expanded, but our health spans—the number of years we live with mental sharpness, physical independence, and emotional well-being—has not kept pace....
The Enduring Notion Of Libraries
What made libraries so exciting? They were hardly novelties. Roman writers like Cicero and the two Plinies assembled rich collections of books in their...
Why Is Everything Around Us So Ugly?
Despite more advanced manufacturing and design technologies than have existed in human history, our built environment tends overwhelmingly toward the insubstantial, the flat, and...
The Visa Process For Artists To Enter The US Is Capricious And Unpredictable
This summer, five artists — Yumzhana Sui from Buryatia, Michel Lafleur from Haiti, Boluwatife Victoria Lawal and Samuel Olayombo from Nigeria, and Patrick Ruganintwali...
Our Obsession With “Wellness” Has Gotten Seriously Distorted
There’s the softer version of wellness, one characterized by some combination of smoothie consumption and aspirational TikTok videos. Then there are the more hard-line...
Valery Gergiev Concert In Rome Called Off After Outcry Of Protests
The cancellation came after more than 16,000 people, including Nobel laureates, Italian and international politicians and activists, signed a letter addressed to De Luca...
The Grand Ole Opry At 100: An Extraordinary Institution That Powers An Industry
Any given night, the lineup may include mainstream country stars of the present and the distant past, bluegrass bands, gospel vocal groups, singer-songwriters, hotshot...
Millions Of Scientific Research Papers Are Being Published, Overwhelming The System
Unhelpful incentives around academic publishing are blamed for record levels of retractions, the rise in predatory journals, which publish anything for a fee, and the emergence of...
A Robot That Analyzes Paintings And Paints
"If you look at one of our works randomly on the street, you wouldn't be able to say that's made by a robot, but...
Did Christian Marclay Have Only One Good Idea?
The Clock, a 24-hour, MoMA-headlining video-clock, has enjoyed a rare Barbenheimer blockbuster status in the art world. It’s a real-time video, edited from thousands of...
Where Defunding Public Broadcasting Will Really Matter
Resistance from Murkowski and other lawmakers from rural states exposed an uncomfortable truth about federal funding for public media stations: Rural stations — often...
Donors Withdraw Support From Museum After DeSantis Assigns It To A College
Donors are reportedly planning to pull support from, or have already severed ties with, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art following its...
Have We Amused Ourselves To Death Yet?
Neil Postman, who died in 2003, predicted that America wasn’t trending toward existence under the boot of totalitarianism, as in George Orwell’s “1984,” but...
Is There Cultural Resonance In Silenced Languages?
Does silence have its own language, I wonder? And if it does, what is it? Is it that of benumbed Russians, lost to resurrected,...
A Movie About Modigliani! And Johnny Depp! So What Could Go Wrong?
Johnny Depp’s new film Modi: Three Days on the Wings of Madness explores the artist’s struggle to sell his work, and the tension that existed between...
What Price Culture? Governments Reassess
From the role of large-scale cultural events like the European Capital of Culture to the so-called “Bilbao effect” (where a new cultural site is thought to spark revitalisation and economic...
Will AI Kill TV?
When AI is generating all the scripts, performances, music and visual design, and there are no more creative humans whose work the machines can...
How Popular Culture Trained Us In The Art Of The Conspiracy Theory
The promise of elusive answers implores you to plunge deeper, deeper, into a thriller of your own, one that you both consume and help...
So Many Things Are Problematic About Dostoyevsky In Today’s Culture. And Yet…
As for Dostoyevsky himself, there is something dark and dangerous, perhaps even depraved, about his work which makes him more relevant to contemporary readers...
