Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Keeping It Real – And Dreamy Too
To make In the Heights work as a movie, the playwright and scriptwriter Quiera Alegría Hudes had to make painful cuts, and so did...
HBO Max Walks A Tightrope Of Media Rights
Success in streaming, as Netflix has shown, ultimately requires reaching subscribers in every corner of the planet. But taking a streaming service around the...
How Binary Thinking Constricts Design
The ways that each culture defines gender norms and structures are unique. Historically, the U.S. enforced a rigid gender binary to support its relentless...
Why Has Philosophy Failed?
For almost any abstract notion, some philosopher has wondered what it really is. Yet, despite this wealth of questions and the centuries spent tackling...
Behind The Debate On Critical Race Theory
“The debate isn’t about whether there’s been racism; it’s about what racism has meant and what it’s done to America. Is it something that’s...
Carlos Acosta Calls For Ballet That Reflects Now
"I don’t want to keep riding with own Swan Lake or The Nutcracker – that’s fine, I love them, that made my career...
The Private Detective Who Has Recovered Half A Billion Dollars Worth Of Art
Christopher Marinello spends his life tracking stolen masterpieces. "I get a huge amount of tips, usually on WhatsApp. ... Sometimes they are from informants...
Ross Douthat Sees Mediocrity Everywhere, Laments Paucity Of “Great Thinkers”
"My own favoured explanation, in The Decadent Society, is adapted from the American sociologist Robert Nisbet’s arguments about how cultural golden ages hold traditional...
What It’s Like To Play The Violin Of Violins
The Sala Paganiniana, where Il Cannone resides inside the Palazzo Tursi, is monitored by scientists, experts, and bodyguards. The instrument is played monthly by...
Young Vic Says “Theatre Has Changed Forever” And Will Livestream Its Work
Kwame Kwei-Armah told the Guardian the pandemic had changed theatre forever, with the livestreaming of plays becoming “hard baked” into how the industry operates....
Discovered: When Tennessee Williams Wrote A Fan Letter To Eugene O’Neill
“An impassioned letter from Tennessee Williams to Eugene O’Neill is an astonishing find in the world of American drama studies. Just when it seems...
In Kashmir, Sufi Music Was For Men Only. These Young Women Are Keeping It...
"For centuries, the tradition was passed down from one man to another. But sisters Irfana and Rihana Yousuf began to play with support from...
NYC To Launch $25 Million Artist Corps Program To Hire 1,500 Artists
"We're going to hire artists, musicians, performers, and they're going to be out in communities doing public art, public performances, pop-up shows…creating murals, you...
Matthew Bourne Starts New School To Prepare Minority Dancers For Professional-Level Work
Cygnet School, based in Canterbury, "is designed to bridge a gap that Bourne had noticed between young people who excel in dance at a...
Musicians Versus The Streaming Companies – Something’s Gotta Change
The artists’ demands are threaded with anger and anxiety over the degradation of creative labor. But the musicians face long odds. Despite solidarity among...
What If An AI Bot Curated The Whitney Biennial?
"A new online art project based on data from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Liverpool Biennial attempts to imagine 64 different...
How To Think About Racist Statues That Have Been Taken Down
To date there are no large-scale programs or comprehensive models for dealing with defaced or removed monuments. However, the museum and heritage sectors —...
The Birth Of Newsletters, 600 Years Before Substack
"Newsletters began in mid-fifteenth-century Venice. Subscribers would receive handwritten letters twice a week rounding up interesting events. Sixteenth-century merchants used similar news sources to...
AMC Theatres Loses $567 Million
Revenues at the world’s largest exhibition chain topped out at $148.3 million, down 84.2 percent from the year-ago period, while the company logged a...
How, And Why, Barry Jenkins Went Through With Ten Episodes Of ‘The Underground Railroad’
"There was only one time when he seriously thought about quitting. The project … had just been announced, in the fall of 2016. Within...
Short Opera Videos Are One Pandemic Innovation We Should Keep
Over the past months we've gotten "a range of short films that showcase top talents in American opera, highlight contemporary composers and recruit other...
Hollywood Is Hiring Rage Coaches To Teach Awful Execs Some Self-Control
"How to be a better boss is a question that has come under new scrutiny in Hollywood thanks to some high-profile examples of spectacularly...
For First Time, No Individual Artists Are Finalists For Turner Prize
"The choice of collectives reflects the fact that few artists have been able to publicly show anything over the past year. It prompted judges...
New York Launches $25 Million City Artist Corps
"The program … will give money to artists, musicians and other performers to create works across the city, whether through public art, performances, pop-up...
La Scala Begins Construction On New Building
"The foundation stone has been laid for new building, which will be constructed to the rear of the existing structure." The project, designed...