Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Lessons About The Market At This Year’s ArtBasel
For now, Art Basel’s reputation for quality and importance in the art market continues to draw in more seasoned collectors, but that may change...
Our Technologies Keep Trying To Give Us “Experiences.” They’re Fake.
More and more, our “mediating technologies” are in the business not of enhancing our own senses to encounter the world better, but in replacing...
Climate Change Activists Fling Pink Paint On A Star Picasso Painting In Montreal
The Picasso painting, an early Blue Period portrait from the permanent collection of the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, is a star attraction in the...
New AI Arts Residencies Intend To Promote Artists Working In AI
These residencies, usually hosted by tech labs, museums, or academic centers, offer artists access to tools, compute, and collaborators to support creative experimentation with...
An Ambitious Seattle Artist Housing Initiative Falters
Artspace secured millions in public funding for affordable housing to support the arts. But instead of stemming Seattle’s creative brain drain, problems at the...
Explaining The ABBA Phenomenon (In Retrospect)
In the wake of the nineties revival, ABBA’s music has come to seem so universal—pure, uncut, lab-grade pop, purified of any particularizing influences—that it...
“Jaws” At 50 – Why It Became Iconic
Jaws has earned the “classic” epithet. It invokes certain nostalgia for cinephiles and original audiences, many of whom fondly remember their first viewing. Aside from...
The Long-Controversial Semi-Colon Is Falling To Neglect
Abraham Lincoln was one of the punctuation mark’s supporters: “I have a great respect for the semicolon; it’s a very useful little chap,” he wrote....
Two Years After The British Museum Thefts Were Revealed, Big Questions About The Curator...
What might have motivated a respected professional to allegedly take such high risks for such low rewards? Why is the police investigation taking so...
GAO Agency Finds That Trump Administration Withholding Of Library And Museum Funding Breaks Law
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a decision on Monday finding that the Trump administration‘s withholding of funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), appropriated by Congress,...
The Loneliness Epidemic And Its Link To Technology
Studies link loneliness and social isolation to increased mortality, dementia and stroke. Among adults, loneliness is linked to chronic diseases such as heart disease and obesity, and it...
Seventeen Years Later, Spain’s Publishing Industry Works Itself Back To 2008 Level
Spain was especially hard hit by the 2008 financial crisis, with a housing market collapse, credit growth in real estate, a fast-shrinking GDP, unemployment...
The Festival That Puts a Scientist In Every Pub
The Roving Scientist Bar thus became a flagship program of the Beaker Street Festival, this year returning to Hope & Anchor, Australia’s oldest continuously...
Colorado Museums Brace For Program Cancellations
Institutions across Colorado were awarded about $4.3 million in IMLS grants, most of which require matching funds from the museum or library, for the...
Neuroscientist: Music Involves Every Cognitive Ability We Have
“The interesting thing about music is that it touches memory, perception, motor skills, emotions, and reading. It touches everything." - El Pais
AI Is Rewiring The Internet And… Of Course There Are Downsides
A growing body of research correlates persistent use of AI with a drop in critical thinking; humans become reliant on AI and unwilling, perhaps unable, to verify its work....
Posting The Receipts: Writers Are Documenting Themselves Writing On TikTok To Prove They’re Not...
Prolific authors are not only calling out people who use AI to write, they’re also posting livestreams and time-lapses of their writing processes to...
Inside Pensacola, America’s Book-Banning Capital
Many Pensacola parents were appalled by this surge of censorship; some wondered if it was unconstitutional. By early 2024, a U.S. district court judge...
Is Art Basel Losing Its Mojo?
Art Basel’s flagship event in Switzerland now faces formidable challenges. The 289 gallerists from 42 countries participating in this year’s edition of the fair,...
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Loses Its Recently-Hired Executive Director
Before leading the festival, Gabriella Calicchio had more than 25 years of experience in the arts, including as managing director of Minneapolis’ nonprofit Children’s...
Fish Out Of Water: A Working Class Writer At The Iowa Writers’ Workshop
"Before their arrival, my classmates had been editorial assistants and reporters and interns for major publications. I had been working nights as a package...
Why Culture Desperately Needs Better Digital Infrastructure
When AI systems learn about Canadian culture, history, and events, they should be learning from trusted, structured, Canadian sources - not filtered scraps from...
How Detroit Reinvented Through The Arts
Fuelled by an enterprising spirit born from recent adversity, many have found new ways to inject life into their communities and cultural arenas. In...
So Why Does Everyone Seem To Be Identifying With Imposter Syndrome?
The phrase “impostor syndrome” often elicits a fierce sense of identification, especially from millennial and Gen X women. When I put out a call...
Netflix To Start Streaming Broadcast Channels
If it proves successful, Netflix and TF1’s partnership could unlock the door for more linear channels to air on streaming services, including in other...
