Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
When An Actor Criticizes The Show They’re In…
I’ve had artists and members of the theater community reach out after a review — yes, even ones where I didn’t care much for...
Is The Live Entertainment Capital Of America Really Branson?
Few places in the country host a professional show-business destination as quirky and expansive as this Missouri mountain town a few dozen miles north...
Chess Computers Are Now So Dominant, Are Humans Even A Factor In High-Level Play?
In an era when chess engines entirely dominate the game—when they’ve so monopolized human players’ thinking, strategy, and preparation that chess has, in certain ways,...
The Viral Tyranny Of TikTok
This new era of instant, inexplicable attention has also come at a price. In interviews with more than three dozen TikTok creators, many noted...
How The Denver Art Museum Removed Columbus From Its Stories
It is easier to understand objects created during the current downfall of Columbus and those who followed him, if you can see the art...
Dance As A Model For “Life Lived In Time”
If we look at the world through Parson’s eyes, we find that dance is all around us, in people stretching or hugging or standing...
Inside The Makeover Of The New York Times Business
“Is the Times always going to be fundamentally a news company expanding into these ancillary tech products?” she asked. “Or is it trying to...
Inspiration Or Exploitation? The Winning Literary Strategy
It turns out that the strategy of exploitation prevails in fiction at large. Knowing the topics of just a few books by an author,...
Crisis In UK Theatre Schools
Drama Centre London stopped taking new students in 2019 before shutting. ALRA, one of England’s most established performing arts institutions, suddenly collapsed. Musical Theatre...
How Media Covered The Philadelphia Art Museum Strike (And Why It Matters)
What is the arts writer’s beat? Are we still on it when we take a stand about something happening inside a major arts institution,...
Meet “Pleasure Activism”
Pleasure activists believe that, by tapping into the potential goodness in each of us, we can generate justice and liberation, growing a healing abundance...
New AI Turns Sketches Into Finished Artwork
Stable Diffusion’s AI allows users to create images from other pictures, drawn on the spot. That’s right: Input your napkin doodles and half-sketched masterpieces...
For Third Year In A Row, US University Enrollment Declines
The rate of the decline has slowed this fall, with college enrollment dropping 1.1% since last autumn. Over the first two years of the...
What The Andy Warhol Case Says About The US Supreme Court
The Court’s grappling with Warhol’s cultural criticism may end up being its most revealing comment this term on the nature of its own role...
Theatre Trigger Warnings Have Gotten Out Of Hand
Just how much coddling do theatergoers need these days? An audience advisory for the touring production of the recent revisionist Broadway revival of “Oklahoma!”...
Editing: The Art Of Deleting (And Adding)
It’s a common misapprehension that “editing” is a synonym for “deleting.” Yes, by all means trim away what I call the Throat-Clearers and Wan...
Billionaire Russian’s International Art Hub Crashes As International Artists Pull Out
Less than a year later, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, it has become a symbol of the cultural death knell of the...
Winners Of This Year’s ArtPrize
“What makes ArtPrize unique is that awards and prizes are selected by both public visitors casting votes and also by jurors,” revealing “the intersections...
The World Within English Songs
There are more English songs to be discovered, past, present and future. Seams of gold run through those blue remembered hills and our modest...
Twyla Tharp Changes Her Mind – Consider The Context
Tharp, watching the world experience the pandemic, has changed her mind about “In the Upper Room” — not about what it represents, but where...
How Listening Habits Have Changed
“Ipsos' survey finds that affluents are spending significant time with audio, especially AM/FM radio. They report listening to the radio for 4 hours a...
Want To Read This Book? In This Michigan School District, You’ll Be Sent To...
Students will now be put in touch with a school counselor if they want to check out the book. The counselor will then contact...
Netflix Rebound: Adds Subscribers After Losing Many
The company added 2.4 million new subscribers in the September quarter, after having forecast a net gain of 1 million customers. The subscriber growth followed...
Netflix’s Big Internal Debate: Do Its Movies Belong In Movie Theatres?
Some argued that Netflix is leaving hundreds of millions in box-office receipts on the table with its current strategy of showing only select movies...
Using A State Of Indifference
There are two kinds of things in the world: the good and the indifferents. Note that the first is singular, the second, plural. For there...
