Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The New Cultural Critique: Anti-Fans
Anti-fans, as pop-culture scholars have termed them, are similar to hate-watchers: consumers who become fixated on what frustrates them. Both groups tend to target something...
Our Times Can Be Understood As A New Kind Of Cultural Revolution
Unlike the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, which imposed ideology on their populaces by means of culture and entertainment, America’s current reality is...
The Curious Case Of Francis Bacon’s Friend Barry
For over a decade before that spring day in 1992, Barry Joule, a Canadian handyman with a rock-star mane, had been one of Bacon’s...
Delayed George Lucas Museum’s CEO To Step Down
Jackson-Dumont’s departure comes just months after the museum quietly delayed its opening from this year to 2026. The museum has now delayed its opening...
America’s Oldest University Is Threatened. Can It Survive?
Harvard is the flagship of American higher education ...and what started as a crisis of speech and authority on campus has grown into a...
The Main Oscars Message? Hollywood Is Afraid
I feel for public figures in a way: damned if they do, damned if they don’t. After Sunday night, the film industry looks craven...
The New Rationalism Versus The Humanities
In many ways, rationalism is the result of people with STEM educations attempting to tackle questions that had long been the purview of the...
Canada’s Quiet, Efficient System Of Book-Banning
Not all these phenomena constitute “banning” per se, but they all fall under what we might call the new “censorship consensus,” in which books...
This Year’s Oscars Show The Hollywood Dream Still Lives
If there is something that unites “Anora” and “The Brutalist,” in terms both of onscreen story and behind-the-scenes process, it’s a masterful dedication to...
New Zealand University Students Protest Decision To Use AI To Replace Traditional Lecture Slides
Three AI programs are set to replace lecture slides in the University of Auckland’s Digital Marketing 304 class when the first semester of the year...
It’s Expensive To Make Culture. We’re Falling Behind
"We’ve now seen years and years of austerity, and it’s not just the arts that have taken a hit – it’s anything that sits...
We’ve Gotten Into A Zero-Sum Mindset. It’s Dangerous
This is what’s called zero-sum thinking — the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for...
Worries About This Year’s Oscars TV Ratings
In the run-up to the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, worries about the size of the TV audience have rumbled through the movie capital....
Ditching The Ballet Tights As A Radical Act
The decision to forgo tights was the culmination of a conversation about equity and inclusion that began at the National Ballet in 2020. -...
Cultural Excellence Is Fragile (And Under Threat In America)
It can be fractured, confined, and eroded—perhaps not all at once, but over time if the conditions are not right for genius to...
Guggenheim Museum Lays Off 20 Staff Amid Worsening Financial Condition
The cuts are spread over six departments, including advancement, education, publications and archives, but do not affect curators and top executives. - The New York...
A Classical Music Guide To Dewokifying Your DEI Music
Yes, thanks to recent political and cultural developments, we now have the freedom to appreciate the work of various American heroes in a new,...
The Atlanta Public Art Project That Just Works
With more than 100 sculptures, art installations and murals, the Atlanta Beltline is the largest outdoor public art collection in the Southeast. It’s one...
A Weird Thing About This Year’s Movie Oscar Nominees
This year’s 10 feel, largely, like a lawless batch of movies made by filmmakers who, I imagine, might be surprised to find themselves in...
Does A Fast-Growing Fringe Theatre Circuit Obviate Edinburgh Fringe’s Relevance?
Many of these shows started at the Edinburgh Fringe. However, hang around the environs of Adelaide Fringe’s artist hubs and you will soon hear...
Was There Ever A Festival Disaster As Epic As The Fyre Festival? Well, Welcome...
Whatever you think about the first Fyre – with its limp cheese sandwiches, its disaster-relief-tent accommodation, the absence of advertised headliners, the $26m of...
They Say AI Is Beating Humans At Tasks. But Is The Game Rigged?
It’s true that in several prominent studies, researchers have staged “competitions” in which AI technology appears to outperform humans in these very human areas....
Author Joseph Wambaugh, 88
Before Mr. Wambaugh’s era as a writer, which began in 1971, police dramas like the television series “Dragnet” were implausible stories about clean-cut heroes...
The Crisis At What Was The Kennedy Center
“The real crisis we’re facing, in addition to people rescinding their membership, is that we’re normally finalising our season at this time and it’s...
The Limits Of Language: Is There Really A Word For That?
Exploring this material—the work of philosophers, poets, and theoreticians who grappled with what it means to speak and to understand speech—can help us understand...
