Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Lessons From The Taliban’s Extreme War On Music
Since their return in 2021, the Taliban have waged a war on music, claiming that it causes “moral corruption”. According to figures from...
Hungary’s Lucrative Production Incentives Put Hollywood Values On The Line
None of the studios, production companies or streamers approached by Deadline who have films and TV series filming in Hungary are commenting, with current...
Many Thought TV Would Kill Movies. It Didn’t. Lessons For The Coming Of AI?
Today, lessons from the introduction of TV demonstrate how the creative industries have navigated the introduction of new technology. And could offer some comfort...
Hungary’s New Repressive LGBTQ+ Laws Don’t Seem To Have Discouraged Hollywood Tax Incentives
Both Europe’s most right-wing nation and its second hottest destination for international shoots, Hungary has shocked the world with its recent ban on LGBTQ+...
The Shutting Down Of American Intellectual Leadership
There’s a cost to this beyond the tourist dollars and economic impacts others will analyse. It’s the great silencing of a cultural conversation once...
Claim: No One Wants To Watch Overweight Dancers. Really?
As an absolute entry level precondition for excellence in ballet, a dancer cannot be overweight. - The Times (UK)
Eric Schmidt: AI Will Rival The Smartest Artists In a Few Years
“This is happening faster than… our society, our democracy, our laws will address, and there’s lots of implications. That’s why it’s underhyped – people...
High Practitioner Of The Takedown Read
Andrea Chu has achieved a rare ascendancy in the literary world over the past several years, in equal parts for her clever, lethal takedowns...
Hollywood’s Click-Obsessed Descent Into Meaninglessness
Conservative dominance of Hollywood may prove to be a much rosier future than the one we’re actually going to get: a future where pop...
Coachella’s Tickets Are So Expensive People Buy Them On Installment Plans. Good Idea? Or...
Coachella’s payment plan is just this: For a $599 GA ticket (including fees), fans had the option to put $49.99 down when tickets went...
How Architecture Shapes Everything About Video Games
These virtual spaces do more than serve as mere backdrops for gameplay. The design of buildings, streets and entire cities guides player emotions, behaviours...
A History Of Spelling Reform (Please Make It Simpler!)
In the early 20th century, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie provided the seed money for the Simplified Spelling Board, which, unlike the Spelling Reform Association,...
Study: Number Of Theatre Productions In UK Has Declined By A Third In The...
In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened...
Why “Close Reading” Can Miss The Plot
When you studied literature in school or university, I expect that you were taught, implicitly or explicitly, that this plot-focused way of reading was...
A Conservative Argument For Culture Funding Betrays The Problems With Such Arguments
Its curious incoherence is emblematic of a movement of cultural conservatives that’s lost the plot. - Artnet
SoulPepper Theatre Launches A Community “Public Domain” Project
With a full slate of free programming that ranges from workshops and classes to performance, the company is hoping to become a neighbourhood hub....
France Agrees To Collaborate With India On Major Controversial Museum Project
The controversy around France’s deal with India may appear more ambiguous to a Western audience. Is it France’s concern if the YYBNM decides to...
The Man Behind Philadelphia Pianos
For the past several decades, Greg Sikora has tuned and voiced pianos for the biggest musical artists to play this region, from Frank Sinatra...
Why The Human Brain Needs Ideologies
Our brains are these amazingly predictive organs trying to constantly explain the world, because that’s our way to survive. We have to have a...
Tech Titans Propose An End To Intellectual Property
One can only imagine what the value of music would look like if copyright protections were to disappear altogether. It would not be a...
How “Six” Challenges Conventional Broadway Musical Conventions
“Six,” which runs a sleek 85 minutes as an unruly concert where performers are explicitly competing for the audience’s sympathy, might ultimately be less...
The Classically Cool Frick Re-emerges
If the museum experience is now more stylistically bifurcated — the Beaux Arts past on one side of the complex, a sympathetic but unapologetic...
Trump Administration Wants Congress To Cancel Funding For PBS, NPR
The plan is to request that Congress rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If Congress agrees, that will...
Why Trump’s Sculpture Garden Project Of American Heroes Is A Big Deal
Effectively killing the NEH in its current form and then reallocating its money to build the National Garden of American Heroes—the centerpiece of Trump’s plans to...
Stem Or Humanities? It’s a Disastrous Distinction
In fact, neither one of these labels names a particularly coherent group of fields. STEM covers endeavors as different in their workings and aims...
