Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Abu Dhabi Says It Will Build Two More Major Museums
“In Abu Dhabi there has been a very clear and conscious decision to invest in culture, and investing in culture does not just mean...
What Does An Investment In Mental Health For Dancers Look Like?
Encouraging dancers to pay attention to their mental health is one thing, but actually providing access to services sends an entirely different message. -...
Song-writer Dave Frishberg, 88
His songwriting wit was for grown-ups, yet he reached his widest audience with sharpshooting ditties for kids as a regular musical contributor to ABC-TV’s...
Talk To The Hand – How Our Hands Help Us Communicate
I hadn’t perceived how hard it is to read the responses of one’s audience when the most expressive part of the face is hidden. -...
Will The Supreme Court Finally Declare Copyright Piracy Theft? (Wait… What?)
For quite some time, there’s been an esoteric debate running in intellectual property circles as to whether copyright infringement is best characterized as thievery. -...
Why Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Is Stepping Down In Birmingham
If this period of enforced home life made her reassess her priorities – she lives in Salzburg with her husband and their two children...
A Sharp Rise In Demands To Ban Books In Libraries
“We’re seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges. I’ve worked for ALA for 20 years, and I can’t recall a time when we had multiple...
Why Did We Organize Time Into Seven-Day Weeks?
The development that really established the seven-day week as insurmountable, David Henkin contends, came in the middle of the twentieth century: the television schedule....
Why Does Sad Music Make Us Feel Better?
It can act as a social surrogate. Sad music can be experienced as an imaginary friend who provides support and empathy after loss. -...
Education As A Class Indicator (But Maybe Not How You Think)
Historically, in America, the true strength of the Classics and of a Classical education has not been among the elite but among the rising...
Technology Is Promising Boosts To Your Enlightenment
Technoboosts include brain stimulation, which uses electric currents or other means to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior, and synthetic psychedelics,...
Why We Sleep
Sleep’s benefits extend far beyond the brain, and that muscles, the immune system, and the gut can all have a say in when and...
Students And Teachers Of The Afghanistan National Institute of Music Flee
The school became known for supporting the education of girls, who make up about a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra,...
As Beirut’s Conditions Deteriorate, Its Orchestra Plays On
As the value of Lebanese money fell, the 100 or so musicians in the orchestra watched the value of their pay fall from $3,000...
This Time, We’re Really Anxious (A History)
Of course, anxiety never went away. Depression might have seemed ubiquitous, but people in the late 20th century hardly had less to be anxious about or more...
A New Model For Funding Art?
It pools 100 medium-sized donation of $1,000 each, with the total amount going to one not-for-profit project. Community projects apply and have their applications...
How Punk Rock Of The 70s And 80s Figured Out Safe Concerts
Venues for punk shows were numerous, encompassing everything from pet grooming stores to nonprofit community centers. The small-venue approach lent itself to the formation...
Theatre That Breaks Pre-Pandemic Rules
It's a musical experiment that questions the long-accepted rules of theatermaking and theatergoing, established and upheld before the pandemic. For example, a percentage of...
Hmnnn – UK Change Of Stance On Repatriation Of The Parthenon Marbles?
When Boris Johnson’s spokesperson was asked on Tuesday, he said: “I won’t pre-empt their meeting, obviously, but the possession of the marbles is a...
Harry Potter Cast To Reunite For 20th Anniversary TV Special
The release made no mention of Rowling when listing those participating in the retrospective. While Harry Potter remains a beloved franchise, Rowling sparked backlash from the trans community...
Of Course It Does: China Unveils New Five-Year-Plan For Film
The plan’s ultimate goal, however, is to build China into a “strong cultural power” by 2035 — one that can only be achieved, it...
Netflix Releases More Viewer Data, But…
Let’s be clear: Netflix’s bigger bucket of Top 10 lists, even if they’re independently verified, is ultimately self-serving — designed to promote its most...
Hong Kong’s Ambitious New M+ Opens, Built For A Different Time, Different Politics
The museum compares itself to Paris’s Centre Pompidou and New York’s Museum of Modern Art — but it has already moved to censor work as it...
The US Constitution: Is It Holding Back a Fairer Culture Or Holding Us Back?
Two new books reveal the widening gulf between those who see the Constitution’s age as a sign of its wisdom and those who see...
How The Week Shapes Our Perception Of Time
When you think it’s a Tuesday and it turns out to be Wednesday, you feel disoriented in a way that you don’t typically if...
