Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Behold The Modern Literary Festival — What An Uncreative Place!
The growth of British literary festivals over the past few decades has been an exponential development. It has also changed the idea of what...
Orchestra League President: There Are Three Issues Going Forward
Simon Woods: "I keep coming back to three defining issues that I believe will fuel our artistic creativity and our financial success." - Medium
What Corrupts The Visual Art World
Institutional bureaucrats, not billionaires, have the power to constrain the possibilities for aesthetic development in the present. The figure of the contemporary artist we...
A Children’s Mental Health Crisis: One Thing We Could Do
We are well past the point of believing that casual or inferred approaches meet the need. With summer programs right around the corner, there...
A New Theatre Festival That Doesn’t Look Like Anything Else
“When communities are allowed to craft their own narrative, that narrative is more complex. We are not imposing on or colonizing them with a...
David Cronenberg On Our Bodies And The Future Of Movies
One of the things that brought me back to moviemaking was Netflix and the idea of streaming and a streaming series. I think theaters...
Africa Is Inventing Its Own Streaming Music Model
With 60 million active users, Boomplay is the most popular music streaming service in Africa. Leading the pack, it is one of a bevy of...
The Culture Behind Paint Color Names
Paint names developed their own poetic style and, like a certain tradition of lyric poetry they make reference to nature to express mood or...
Osmo Vanska Reflects On 20 Years At The Minnesota Orchestra
"I disagree that any orchestra has a maximum quality level that can’t be exceeded... It’s a never-ending task, but if we look at it...
Your Brain Is Begging You: Please Slow Down!
A third of all Americans clock 45 hours or more of work per week, with 8 million reporting 60-plus hours. Compared with 1940, individuals now consume almost 90 times more screen-fed information....
Are Orchestras A Good Model For The Larger World?
In many ways, the orchestra can reflect the society we live in and the teams we inhabit at work or at home. Several parallels...
The “Everything’s Going To Hell But I’m Doing Great” Phenomenon
Though the number of Americans who said that they personally were “doing at least okay” actually rose slightly from 2019 to 2021, their evaluation...
Want To Buy Verdi’s House?
Verdi built Villa Verdi on land he owned in Sant’Agata di Villanova, a hamlet near his home town of Busseto in the Emilia-Romagna region,...
Has The Great Majority Of The World’s Greatest Literature Been Lost?
Researchers concluded that a humbling 90% of medieval manuscripts preserving chivalric and heroic narratives – those relating to King Arthur, for example – have gone. Of...
Why, Despite Efforts, Have The Arts Failed To Diversify?
‘In answer to the question, “Who do you make work for?” people will say, “I make work for everyone – for anyone.” But when...
After Twelve Years, Old Vic Bristol Has A New Leader
“For Bristol Old Vic to appoint a highly talented Black Latinx woman as artistic director provides a real opportunity to effect real change in...
Space Opera Is Thriving (And Evolving)
The subgenre has evolved and thrived for a century with its key elements mostly intact: galactic encyclopedias of knowledge, interstellar politics, heroic journeys, and...
Five Takeaways From This Year’s Cannes Festival
That’s 107 films, 11 days, and flickering images that don’t stop playing in your mind after the credits end. - Screen Daily
Do The Arts Have Too Many Managers?
Half of all public and private grants now pay administrators’ salaries – only a quarter fund arts production. Even if many are wonderful, managers...
How The Pandemic Has Changed How We Think About Work
Commuting may have a bad reputation, but for a surprising number of people it can be positively enjoyable. - 3 Quarks Daily
Latest Horror Show: Movie Theatres Worry About Popcorn Shortage
Theaters are finding workers harder to hire, and inflation is hitting costs. Perhaps most chilling, supply-chain issues are foreshadowing shortages behind the concession stand,...
End Of An Aura: Licensing Company Forbids Vegas Wedding Chapels From Using Elvis
The licensing company that controls the name and image of “The King” is ordering Sin City chapel operators to stop using Elvis in themed...
Why We Can’t Stop Measuring Things
Around 6,000 years ago, the first standardised units were deployed in river valley civilisations such as ancient Egypt, where the cubit was defined by...
Why Are We So Attracted To Disaster Stories?
Maybe we rubberneck over disasters because we are bored by our relatively cushy safety. Or maybe we can’t avoid the threats as they creep...
Writer Who Wrote About Killing Husband Is Convicted Of Killing Husband
Ms. Brophy, who had written self-published romance novels, had once speculated in a 2011 blog post that a wife who kills her spouse must...
