Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Right To Be Forgotten: Should Newspapers Have To Remove Your Name If You...
“The big concern here is that, basically, news organizations are now willingly performing much more extreme acts of censorship of their own content than...
New Player In Billion-Dollar Music Rights Management
HarbourView is the latest player in what has become a high-stakes contest in the music business: the ownership and control of catalogs of songs,...
When Jan Swafford Was Asked To Review An AI-Written “Beethoven Tenth” Symphony
“Not for me,” I said. “I know pretty much what I’ll think about it, and my review could get snarky.” “If so, that would...
Of Poetry, Plagiarism, And Artistic Influence
Where were the limits exactly, in what was deemed to be a case of poetry plagiarism? How many lines that emerged while writing, any...
The Transformative Conductor: David Alan Miller @ 30 Years Leading The Albany Symphony
“The orchestras I've worked with have been a bit like ocean liners. Very big, little hard to turn around. And I would say the...
The New Musicology: Beethoven Was Just an “Average White Composer”?
"These various controversies are far from simple disputes between ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ but emblematic of a discipline in which some protagonists lack a sense...
Edward Snowden: Balancing Risk, Reality And Facts
The true challenge is not to enumerate the risk, but to live with it; to stake out the resilient middle ground between denying danger altogether and...
Afghanistan’s Cultural Sector Goes Underground
“In Afghanistan, work in the field of arts and culture is probably one of the hardest jobs.. but we did it because we loved...
Composer Bright Sheng Removed At University Of Michigan After Showing Olivier Othello Film
“To show the film now, especially without substantial framing, content advisory and a focus on its inherent racism is in itself a racist act,...
Why The Oxford English Dictionary Has Added 6 Korean Words
"They show how Asians in different parts of the continent invent and exchange words within their own local contexts, then introduce these words to...
The Odd Contortions Of Hollywood’s New Movie Museum
The Academy has created spaces that, as it declared last year, would “prioritize the experience of traditionally underrepresented or marginalized people.” Unfortunately, this embrace...
Andras Szanto: The Permeability Of Ideas Versus Our Institutions
"To what extent does the artistic institutional system become distanced from primary creativity? The system of scientific institutions is no less problematic. Sooner or...
Capturing The Movement Of Starlings As Art
Kathryn Cooper first films the starlings in 4K resolution. Then, working with clips that range in length from less than a second to more...
How San Francisco’s Last Video Store Survives
“Part of why I work so hard doing this is that I believe people should have access to more than what’s just currently in...
Performative Diversity?
The current emphasis on diversity and inclusivity, however warranted, endangers or distorts a cultural canon that we cannot (in fact, must not) wholly jettison....
Are Audiobooks Superior To Paper?
Audiobooks aren’t cheating. They aren’t a just-add-water shortcut to cheap intellectualism. For so many titles in this heyday of audio entertainment, it’s not crazy...
Streaming Has Killed Music Genres. That’s A Real Loss
Musical genres have long had a peculiar imaginative power and participatory quality. They aren’t just labels imposed by an industry; they’re shaped by passions...
European Movie Box Office Down 70 Percent In 2020
European movie theaters suffered a 70.4% year-on-year drop to €2.6 billion ($3 billion) in box office revenue in 2020. In terms of admissions, there...
Art Pranks (With A Message) On The Rise?
Most of these prankster examples either take a jab at the art market. This intersection seems to have escalated in the last five years,...
First Time: UK Audiences For Streaming Beat Traditional TV
Out of almost a thousand 18-70 year olds who watch at least 5 hours of television per week, more are watching via streaming platforms than traditional...
Today’s “Natural” Acoustics Are Based On Theatre Experiments in 18th Century Paris
When Hollywood technicians debated how to make movies sound natural, they were unwittingly following a trail blazed by 18th-century architects, who spent decades working...
San Jose Theatre Posts All-White Cast, Apologizes, Then Cancels
In attempting to defend itself, San Jose Playhousemade more perceived mistakes, including posting, then deleting, a note that was meant to be private; as...
Gotta Love How This Year’s Documenta Artists Were Announced
In Germany on Friday, October 1, you might have picked up a copy of Asphalt—a publication that is sold to benefit poor and people struggling...
What’s Up With The Movie Museum’s Giant Orb? (Death Star?)
A big glass-and-steel ball is not vanishing into the mist. It sits there and it’s shiny and hard and you have to pay to...
Biden Makes Historic Picks For New Heads Of NEA And NEH
Both selections are historic: Lowe will be the first Native American nominated to lead the federal humanities agency and Jackson will be the first...
