Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
What Did Jefferson’s Call To “The Pursuit Of Happiness” Really Mean?
Jefferson’s Enlightenment contemporaries fully understood. They accepted happiness as our greatest good. But only in theory. And theory, as they were often quick to...
Twelve Masterful Literary Descriptions Of Food
Even in the hands of the greats, food scenes can seem less than central to a story, more filler or filigree than substance. - The...
What We Learned At America’s Biggest Writers’ Convention
This year’s conference was generally low on jargon, but there were still notable moments of turbidity in the conference guide. - Los Angeles Times
Which Museums Have Recovered Visitors As COVID Eases
As elsewhere in the world, the US museums that struggled the most in 2021 were the big names: the world-famous museums in the big...
Social Media’s Impact On Teens
Many researchers say things like Instagram and TikTok probably aren’t entirely bad for all adolescents. They’re not entirely good, either, and can cause documented problems with...
A Defiant Wall Mural That Has Galvanized Belarus
Before the battle over the mural became a symbol of the nation they would call New Belarus, there were just three nondescript buildings in...
Surprising: Museums Haven’t Yet Embraced TikTok
The total number of followers on TikTok for all 100 museums is 1.3 million. That is compared to a total of 55.3 million followers...
Why Giving Grades Is Counter-Productive
They are demotivating, they don’t actually measure learning and they increase students’ stress. - The Conversation
Towards A New Definition Of Scholarship
“We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old ‘teaching versus research’ debate and give the familiar and honorable term ‘scholarship’...
The Difficulty Of Telling History
There is no one past. There are countless pasts. Mine. Yours. The billions, or at least millions, of people who were alive at any...
Why This Moment Of Crises Is An Opportunity For Artists
Change is an act of creation, and that’s what artists do: Through a process of imagining, trying and building, artists create experiences that connect us...
A San Francisco Dance Powerhouse Turns 50
The dance school offers an array of classes that are now both virtual and, finally, in-person. The theater offers some 150 performances a year...
The Motion Picture Academy Says It’s Trying To Be More Diverse. How’s It Doing?
Even after that change, and after another year of invitees in 2021 that continued the trend, the Academy still stands at 81 percent white...
Indian State Gives Money To Takes Young Students To Museums
Bihar’s Ministry of Education has pledged to provide 20,000 rupee ($260) to every primary school in the state for museum visits, with the money...
The Internet As An Idea (That We’re Trapped In)
The crisis really heats up when the algorithm’s structuring power bends back upon us and constrains us into thinking of ourselves as if we...
How Much Of Their Work Should Choreographers Post Online?
It’s a complex calculus, asking artists to become experts in marketing, video editing and budgeting, in addition to dancemaking. But when it comes to...
The Music Catalog Business Is Booming
Catalog valuations have shot up in recent years. In 2021, investors paid multiples equivalent to around 22 times the net publisher’s share of royalties—a...
Supreme Court To Rule On Fair Use In Warhol Work
The case will test fair use defense to copyright infringement and how to assess if a new work based on an older one meaningfully...
Second-Lowest Oscar Ratings Ever
The early results showed a 56 percent improvement on the 9.6 million people who watched last year’s event, according to ABC, though Sunday night’s show...
Why Do We Still Need Religion?
Part of the reason people are attracted to religion is that its rituals – the standing, sitting and kneeling in unison, the singing, the...
Revival Of Surrealism In A Surreal Age
Certainly, if you consider what’s currently happening in visual arts, it appears that we are in a major Surrealist revival. The most prominent bellwether...
The Quantifiable, Scientific Measure Of Art
Art historians may say that they do not need numbers. There is the art: you just need to look, think, and write. But that...
Studies: Children Learn As Much From Guided Play As From Adult Instruction
Researchers looked at 39 studies of play and included 17 in a meta-analysis that found when children ages three to eight engage in guided...
The Oscars’ Audience Problem
The Oscars face a litany of problems, some of which are out of the organization’s control and others that are self-inflicted. Those include the...
What Happens When Students Learn History Through Video Games
Academic historians must now grapple with a new breed of students “for whom Paradox is the historical mother tongue and actual history is only...
