Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Can The Arts Lead A Green Recovery?
"Many people working in culture have been forced to take a time out of the day-to-day and reflect on the big stuff. And there...
The Fascinating Political History Of Dubbing Movies
Dubbing is a brilliant tool for film censorship. Sound films began to appear in the early 1930s, a time when many countries were falling...
Why It’s So Easy To Ridicule The Art World
The contemporary art world is, more often than not, represented as a ridiculous shell game in which empty provocation is propped up by canny...
The Serendipity Of Almanacs
Almanacs are an anomaly in the 2021 literary landscape, a choose-your-own adventure of print culture. So much of reading, especially online, is about seeking:...
Washington’s Signature Theatre Picks A New Leader
Matthew Gardiner takes over the 32-year-old company, which operates two performance spaces in Arlington’s Village at Shirlington, at a tumultuous inflection point. - Washington...
Mapping The Reopening: A TRG Report
55% of U.S. organizations plan to host performances before October 2021. U.K. arts and culture organizations are even more optimistic, with 83% planning a...
How Musical Memories Evolve
Our unreliable memories of musical events are only partly the result of faulty powers of recall. Another contributing factor is the aging process. -...
Security Guards Curate Baltimore Museum Show
“I was struck and moved by the extraordinarily personal, cogent arguments that each officer made for their selection, which was so different from the...
A Music Critic Reconsiders The Star Spangled Banner As A Piece Of Music
What if, after 90 years, we took a diagnostic check on this venerable musical document to see whether it still works as intended? -...
What Jerry Saltz’s Rejection Of Substack Really Means
"Some more enterprising major-media columnists sometimes compare Substack to the broadsheets of journalism’s early decades in the 1800s, though they do this, invariably, as...
How Mathematical Models Gave Us An Advantage With COVID
Enormously useful mathematical tools that have been put to work during the pandemic—from classical differential equations to more recent techniques such as Monte Carlo...
Oklahoma City Ballet Sues Insurance Company Over Denied COVID Claims
“An all risk policy is to cover any loss that you have during the policy period, unless it is specifically excluded.” - KFOR
France Fines Google $593 Million Over News Sharing
It is "one of the first attempts to apply a new copyright directive adopted by the European Union intended to force internet platforms like...
They Said COVID Would Kill Cities. Clearly It Hasn’t
What is so alluring about the perpetually imminent End of Cities? Why won’t that idea itself die? - The New York Times
The Arts Have A Class Problem
Our research found that a complex blend of social inequalities, labour market failures, and outright discrimination are making these jobs so exclusive and keeping...
Movie Theatre Stocks Down As Industry Realigns
“Imagine being a theater owner and realizing studios need you less and less every day. Leverage is shifting rapidly in the streaming era toward...
Warner (Seeing Easy Money) Introduces “NFTs For The Masses”
Nifty’s, which launches on Monday, is all about making NFTs more accessible to the average person who may not want to spend money (let...
US Post Office Launches Stamps Featuring Tap Dancers
"Today, we are celebrating the American art form of tap dance with these vibrant stamps in the heart of Times Square." - KPVI
TV Has Done A Bad Job At Portraying Poverty
We need productions that embrace social realism without condescension, interrogate class insightfully, and present characters that are not caricatures. - The Walrus
LA’s Theatres Face Big Issues In Reopening
Two issues: Uncertainty as to when theatergoers will be ready to cram into small black boxes, and a 2020 state law that stands to...
9/11 Museum’s Twentieth Anniversary Show Canceled For Budget Cuts
Before the coronavirus pandemic, curators had discussed a large anniversary exhibition examining music’s role in uniting Americans after 9/11 and other tragedies. -...
Today’s Newsletter Boom – A New Literary Genre?
The first-person informality that has been present since the earliest days of web writing achieves its business apotheosis in the newsletter: from personal essay...
Meet Andrew Lloyd Webber, Activist
Lloyd Webber — who redefined musical theater with shows like “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats,” and served for years in the House...
Why Debate Over Critical Race Theory Has Nothing To Do With It
Recall the central claims of CRT. Racism is a big, systemic problem in America. If you don’t recognize that, if we can’t at least...
What To Do With The Artists Who Were Bad People?
So little of what well known thinkers and artists did or said is actually reflected in public consciousness, assuming it makes a showing at...
