Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Any Surprise? Top Talent Exiting American Universities
An exodus appears to be under way of Ph.D.s and faculty generally, who are leaving academia in the face of political, financial and enrollment...
Will At The Center Of A Shakespeare Controversy Has Been Located After 150 Years
A will that has been lost for more than 150 years and was at the centre of a bitter legal battle by William Shakespeare’s...
Attack On The Smithsonian Is A Threat To Our History
This is not simply a disagreement over museum curation; it’s a dangerous and calculated attempt to whitewash our history, silence uncomfortable truths, and undermine...
How Wired Magazine Got Scammed By AI
You couldn’t make a better WIRED pitch if you built it in a lab. Or in this case, with the help of a large...
37 Rules For Navigating A Successful Theatre Experience
Here is your cheat sheet for making the most of your time at the theater while not accidentally becoming the drama. - Washington Post...
Can You Really Deprogram Your MAGA Parents With A Book Club?
"I'm begging you to just try and learn something that isn't from Facebook, Fox, or Newsmax," Valeen, a 38-year-old registered Democrat who works as...
Musical Theatre Through The Eyes Of The Orchestra
Even for a theatre critic, the orchestra is easy to overlook. It wasn’t until I sat in behind the scenes, with a copy of...
Is Trump Trying To Sanitize History Of Slavery?
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden...
How Ambiguity Chews The Center Out Of Public Discourse
Democracies thrive on open debate, but when the threat is not strong enough to unite and not weak enough to ignore, debate can spiral...
The Legal Strategy Threatening Your Right To Read
In 2023, our book was one of thousands pulled from library shelves around the country, and as we write, an evolving legal strategy being...
Data: Are Art Historians Now More Employable Than Computer Scientists?
According to data released this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recent art history graduates nationwide were more employed than computer science...
Portland Art Museum Chief Tapped To Run Dallas Museum Of Art
Brian Ferriso came to Portland in 2006 after a series of art museum leadership roles in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Milwaukee and Chicago. During his tenure,...
Why MAGA Is Mad At The Smithsonian
“We’ve got to get patriotism back in the Smithsonian,” conservative Texas Congressman Sam Johnson said, on being appointed to the museum’s Board of Regents...
Trump Is Policing The Smithsonian. How Might He Threaten Other Museums?
The White House started an audit of the Smithsonian earlier this month. But what about other institutions? It is unclear what legal and financial pressures his...
Tough Time For Theatre At This Year’s Edinburgh Fringe
“The audience appetite for theatre just isn’t here this year,” said one producer, who has been bringing work for a number of years, adding...
Should The Rocky Statue Stay At The Philadelphia Art Museum?
I’m not arguing for the original statue to go anywhere, but do we need Stallone’s exact replica of it a few hundred feet away...
Film Schools Are All In On AI
While Hollywood writers and directors wage public battles over AI's threat to human creativity -- with more than 400 industry figures recently petitioning the White House...
We Talk About Community All The Time. What Does It Mean?
It’s important to recognise from the outset the uncontroversial point that, like dolphins or chimpanzees, human beings are by nature social animals. The claim...
Choreography’s Secret Weapon: Hands
The hand not only guides the eye but is the body’s finishing touch. When the hands are unintentional and artificial, they become soulless, dragging...
Trump Widens His Attack On Museums
"The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of "WOKE," he wrote. The post emphasized his ongoing...
A Festival Of AI Films Leaves Me Cold
As something of a generative-AI skeptic, watching the program raised all kinds of questions. - Wired
Oh No: People Are Starting To Talk Like ChatGPT
The unnerving thing is that now, with hundreds of millions of people regularly engaging with chatbots, English-speaking humans are starting to talk like the inhuman communicator...
How AI Is Already Transforming Hollywood
Almost every person I spoke with for this story said that AI is already a core part of the “previz” process, where scenes are...
When Museums Are Made To Be Ideological: Remember Germany
Museums were repurposed to emphasize heroic and nationalist themes. Military museums glorified past victories while erasing defeats. Archives were cleansed of inconvenient truths: Jewish...
What If We’re Chasing Happiness The Wrong Way?
What if we only think of happiness as a goal because we have lost sight of other alternatives? What if the heart of the...
