Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Williamstown Theatre Festival Artistic Director Mandy Greenfield Resigns
The move comes after a Times investigation, published in September, in which 25 current and former festival workers alleged that WTF exposed them to...
Writing About Dance Isn’t A Profession Anymore
The truth is that culture writing that doesn't involve celebrities or popular culture or scandal fills an increasingly small niche in the mainstream press....
Before Time Began And We Were Free
The whole symbolic apparatus of cultural evolution aimed to make freedom—which they define as the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey orders, and...
The Essential Philosophical Question: Have Philosophers Lost Their Way?
Today, few philosophers believe philosophy is a way of life, let alone the fullest and most complete way of life. Or if they do...
What Architects Want Out Of The Climate Change Conference
Leading architecture and design figures attending the summit expressed concerns that the built environment is not being talked about enough, as well as calling...
A Hard Truth? Democracies Aren’t Up To Big Challenges Like Climate Change
The common theme in all these accounts is that the public are not to be trusted – they do not understand, or care; they...
What To Make Of The Montreal Symphony’s New Music Director?
As a successor to Dutoit and Nagano, Payare seems a bit slight. He’s a largely unknown quantity in the music world. The orchestras he’s...
Study: More Diversity on Screen Boosts Viewership
The study found that ratings and social media engagement for most groups, including white audiences, peaked for shows that featured casts that were at...
The Artistic Influences That Made Paul McCartney
The context in which McCartney was exposed to both King Lear and Edward Lear is vital to an understanding of his achievement. - The Guardian
A Book That Promises To Challenge Everything We Think We Know About Human History
“There’s a whole new picture of the human past and human possibility that seems to be coming into view. And it really doesn’t resemble...
Art (And Artists) Are Fleeing The Taliban
There has been a concerted campaign to remove artworks from all aspects of life, in an attempt to make society more Islamic, the Taliban have...
Why The Aspen Ideas Festival Is A Bad One (Idea, That Is)
If we’re to have ideas, let’s have fewer ideas, better ideas, and ideas more likely to annoy the sort of people who bankroll Ideas...
How The Humanities Make Better Thinkers
Henry Adams once wrote that “nothing in education is more astonishing than the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.”...
K-Pop Is Big. So It’s Getting Its Own 20,000-seat Arena
Backed by CJ Live City, a subsidiary of Korean entertainment conglomerate CJ ENM, the venue is designed for mega-scale concerts with 20,000 indoor seats, and...
Whitney Houston Is Back. Singing! Dancing! Are These DeepFake Holograms Creepy Or Cool?
The show in many ways shatters the norms of techno-illusion. A two-minute deep fake is one thing. The dead dancing for us is another....
The Dance That Didn’t Get Made During Lockdown (Sorta)
Choreographer Madeline Hollander has brought together New York City dancers, from big and small companies and from Broadway shows, and given them a task: to perform...
Ai Wei Wei On Being Ai Wei Wei
Ai’s trajectory is impossible to understand without knowing about his late father, Ai Qing. Regarded as one of China’s greatest poets, Ai Qing was...
Do Buildings Have “Moral Purpose”? Jacques Herzog Thinks Not
“They do congresses and symposia and they speak about this and that. I have to say that I have huge doubts. Architecture is the art of...
Can This New Movie Pass Save Art House Theatres?
Mubi, which caters to cinephiles seeking an eclectic mix of films, has begun offering a membership program: A well-stocked streaming service that movie lovers...
We Need A New Way Of Studying Literature
“There is no such thing as an individual work in literature.” The work is always part of a “system of literature,” in which the...
Soprano Designs A Better Mask For Singers
What was wrong with ordinary masks? "They were really close to the lips and you would breathe in and you would suck the fabric right...
The 1619 Project Debate Is Still Roiling The Historian World
As an interpretation not only of the founding moment but of the whole of U.S. history the project involved major scholarship. Yet it didn’t...
Why “Star Trek” Has stood The Test Of Time
From the beginning it had a mission, not just to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go...
Architect Quits Over Dismal Mega-Dorm Project
The dorm, on the UC Santa Barbara campus would be an "11-story, 1.68 million-square-foot building with just two entrances. The massive dorm would house...
The Golden Globes Want To Present Awards Again. Hollywood Takes A Pass
Despite the public silence, according to those involved in the response discussions, there is a broad “consensus” across the entertainment industry to withhold submissions...
