Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
After COVID: NYC Artists Testify About The State Of Things
“The illusion of reopening is that we’re back where we were in February of 2020. The reality is that in the meantime, there’s been...
The Critical Question (Post-COVID)
Playwright Oscar Wilde once warned an age without criticism is “an age that possesses no art at all.” He never could have imagined an...
Come For The Star Wars, Stay For The Kara Walker…
At the Lucas Museum: “What would be fantastic is if people came looking for Star Wars and learn about Ralph McQuarrie and then they learn about...
25-Year-Old New Play Incubator Closes
According to a press release, the decision to shutter the 27-year-old play development mainstay was a “unanimous yet painful conclusion” of the organization’s board...
Philadelphia Orchestra Ditches The Formal Dress
“We’re well into the 21st century. It’s time to acknowledge that in many ways, and one of them is the way the orchestra looks...
The Future Of Tourism? Venice Uses High Tech Surveillance To Limit The Mobs
The city’s leaders are acquiring the cellphone data of unwitting tourists and using hundreds of surveillance cameras to monitor visitors and prevent crowding. Next...
Inside The World Of Screen Subtitlers
It’s possible for subtitles and dubs to be so seamless that they feel invisible without pushing audiovisual translators ourselves out of sight. - Zocalo Public...
Hunter Biden, Artist, Opens His Show. Are His Paintings Really Worth $500K?
As has been previously reported, his gallerist, George Bergès, is looking to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000 a piece for Biden’s paintings. And this has...
Why Don’t Museums Use Their Leverage?
In the museum world, there’s enormous potential stored in the museum’s permanent art collection – not as a financial asset, but as a lever...
Fatty Arbuckle And Hollywood’s First Celebrity Scandal
The Arbuckle affair was the most notorious in a string of Hollywood scandals that threatened to kill off the movie industry in its adolescence. -...
The Decline (And Fall?) Of Facebook
What I’m talking about is a kind of slow, steady decline that anyone who has ever seen a dying company up close can recognize....
Art Market Soars To Record £2.7 Billion, Driven By Online, NFT Sales
Having seen sales collapse by a third in the previous year because of the initial crisis caused by the pandemic, sales soared between June...
The Strange Saga Of Ozy Media Continues: We’re Not Shutting Down
“Last week was dramatic, it was difficult. At the end of the week we did suspend operations with a plan to wind down,” Carlos...
Is Email The Worst Form Of Communication Ever?
Let’s start with what should be obvious: email is a bad way to communicate. There’s the way it gives license to verbiage, turning simple...
The Novel In A Time Of On-Demand Everything
If what fiction most essentially is for us is a volume of commodified time, one of the most notorious facts of contemporary literary life...
Orchestra Conductors: Old Guys Rule
Orchestra conductors appear to live longer than people in any other profession. Famous conductors of the past, then in an era when life expectancy...
The Privilege Of Making Mediocre Art
It’s a common topic of conversation among creatives of color: Can we afford to make mediocre art? Black, brown, Indigenous, East Asian and South...
The Moms Selling Creepy Pictures Of Teen Ballerinas
She tried to defend herself by saying that she was “creating art,” and insisting that her daughter was “simply taking beautiful sporty poses in...
Afghan Art Is Going Underground
Now the Islamists are back in power, and Afghan artists and filmmakers — many who flourished during the past two decades — are scrambling to...
Philadelphia Public Orchestra: Reinventing How Orchestras Work
Ari Benjamin Meyers explains that part of his inspiration for the public orchestra came from the lesser-known Fellini film Orchestra Rehearsal, in which the orchestra...
How Do We Justify Touring Orchestras When It Worsens Climate Change?
I'm increasingly uncomfortable with attending concerts "interpreted by these internationally-touring orchestras when I realize that at least 80 people took a plane for a...
Yale Historian Resigns Citing Inappropriate Donor Influence
Beverly Gage, a historian of 20th-century politics who has led the program since 2017, has resigned, saying the university failed to stand up for...
The Classics Versus Racism
The study of classics should not make anyone feel ashamed because Asia intersects there, India intersects there, Africa intersects there, the Middle East intersects...
From Sistema To The Montreal Symphony’s New Music Director: Meet Rafael Payare
Winding up in the local El Sistema orchestra, he became a conductor almost by accident when handed a baton and told to conduct a...
The Age Of The New Literary Memoir
The fantasy that you can say something so perfectly and with such absolute authority that it never needs another version told from another point...
