Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Point: Criticism That “Stakes A Claim”
I do think the purpose of criticism is to make an assertive claim for what is there. When Toni Morrison speaks of the “Africanist...
The Ghosts Inhabiting Cities
Most metropolises are overrun with ghosts; from New York to London, Mumbai to Shanghai, a simple Google search throws up an encyclopaedia’s worth of...
Woody Allen Says He’ll Retire From Directing
“I’ll probably make at least one more movie. A lot of the thrill is gone,” Allen said. - Variety
The Benefits Of A Long Career In One Orchestra
In this respect, the orchestral world is like a throwback to the postwar employment landscape, when it was not uncommon to spend your entire...
Iconic Daytime Shows Have Called It Quits This Year
A sea of change has hit the daytime format this year as a slew of veteran hosts call it a day. As audiences flock...
Stunning Daylight Attack On TEFAF Fair
In a brazen raid on the Tefaf art fair, one of the men was filmed smashing cases with a sledgehammer while accomplices kept visitors...
What Print Books Are In A Time Of Digital Dominance
Perhaps the term “antiquarian,” which traditionally referred to old, valuable books, often first editions and manuscripts, now seems to me to apply to all...
What The Ancients Knew That Seems So Familiar Today
"It’s really quite strange that people from so long ago seem to have understood so much. And, if you’re looking at things like sexual...
The Value Of Thought Experiments
There are – allegedly – occasions when we come to understand something about the world via a peculiar kind of experiment that takes place...
Just Whom Did The Industrial Revolution Benefit?
When we talk about labor-saving devices, whose labor is saved, exactly? It’s women’s labor. But during the industrial era, the household work traditionally performed by men...
Is Smell The Next Frontier In Theatre?
Away from theatre, the retail sector regularly uses smell to help drive sales (though they give it a nicer name – scent), in a...
Artist Sam Gilliam, 88
Gilliam’s abstractions are unusual in that they are often sculptural, in essence suggesting that painting need not be two-dimensional. Working by methods in which...
Canadian Parliament Ponders New Streaming Law To Require Canadian Content
"The CRTC chair has acknowledged that the law will allow the government to do indirectly what it says it can't do directly, by pressuring...
TEFAF Maastricht Returns To New Realities
The long-established event, regarded as the world’s pre-eminent fair for art, objects and furniture ranging back through the centuries, was canceled in 2021 and postponed...
The Weird Wonderfulness Of Going Back To Glastonbury
If arriving onsite is a slightly discombobulating experience at first – even for a seasoned Glastonbury-goer, the sheer volume of people feels weirdly overwhelming...
Canadian Libraries Slammed By Hate Groups Over LGBTQ-Friendly Programs
More than half a dozen libraries and drag performers, from Saint John to Victoria, reported being inundated online and over the phone by homophobic slurs and, in...
Maldive Islands Announce New Floating City To Adapt To Climate Change
Called Maldives Floating City, the development will contain 5,000 low-rise floating homes floating within a 200-hectare lagoon in the Indian Ocean. As sea levels rise,...
Lost Masters? John Mauceri’s “War On Music”
Conductor John Mauceri has released a study of the forgetting of so much classical music, especially music composed in America by refugees from Nazi-dominated...
Making A Case For Art (It Takes More Than A Village)
You don’t know it’s art by looking at it. You know it’s art because galleries want to show it, dealers want to sell it,...
How The Lexicographers At The OED Try To Keep Up
The English language evolves at such a pace that, for the OED lexicographers, the goalposts aren’t so much shifting as sprinting away from them. -...
Bob Stanley On The Origins Of American Pop
The most dynamic music in the US in the first decade of the 20th century was ragtime, which Stanley claims “set the template for...
Riccardo Muti Unloads On His Way Out Of The Chicago Symphony
Muti, whose Chicago contract runs through the 2022-23 season, considers himself the descendant of strong Italian conductors reaching back to Arturo Toscanini and Tullio...
Why It’s So Difficult To Pin Down Creativity
Magic and mystery are what make jokes funny and creativity so tantalizing. Revealing how a magic trick is done or giving away a punchline...
The Most Multi-Lingual Place On Earth (With Culture To Match)
The many languages spoken here, though mostly belonging to the Indo-European family, still more narrowly to the Dardic sub-family within the Indo-Aryan group, are...
Peter Schjeldahl’s Daughter Wrote A Memoir About Him. It Doesn’t Go Well
“Maybe writing this book would make my father’s … catastrophic personality, seem beautiful to me. … And … maybe … I would seem interesting...
