Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
UK Government To Inject New Money Into The Arts
The Culture Secretary is expected to use a speech in Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare, to announce a new £270 million Arts Everywhere Fund to help organisations in...
The Kennedy Center Debacle As A Mamet Drama
It plays like a David Mamet drama, complete with an inciting incident, characters bringing years of baggage to every scene and a surprising climax....
Cooperation Versus Competition – A Biological, Philosophical Perspective
The evolution of cooperation has been of interest to biologists, philosophers and anthropologists for centuries. If natural selection favours self-interest, why would we cooperate...
Trump And The Corruption Of What Words Mean
Trump has already hit language very strongly, and not just because of his own idiosyncratic manner of speech. As the Times has noted, his administration has...
Minnesota Theatre Says It Will Decline NEA Funding, Double Down On DEI
A Minneapolis theater organization says it will decline federal funding in order to preserve its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. - Bring Me the News
Artists Sign Letter Protesting Changes In NEA Criteria
Hundreds of artists signed a letter sent to the National Endowment for the Arts asking it to reverse policy changes made as a result...
Dancers Perform Protest Outside Kennedy Center
Thirty-four dancers performed The Nelken Line, a piece by choreographer Pina Bausch that pays homage to the seasons. It's been performed widely since Bausch created it...
We Need To Define What Smart Is
If we could stop bickering about which creatures do or don’t deserve to be called smart, an emerging movement of scientists and philosophers argue...
How Research Publishing Has Devolved Into A Citation Game
Gone are the days when academics simply conducted research and published their findings. Now their papers are less valued for their content than for...
An Arts Advocacy Summit: Will It Have Any Impact?
The call to action was to develop a blueprint for the TCC to take to Capitol Hill to advocate for arts funding, with the $207...
Kharkiv’s Puppetry Tradition Thrives During War
But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 dealt Kharkiv’s puppetry a heavy blow, as much of the city’s population of 1.4 million...
Trump’s Kennedy Center Cancels Performance By Gay Chorus
This is the latest event to be canceled by the Kennedy Center since the Trump takeover. The show “Finn,” which could be read as...
When Messiaen Zigged And Other Composers Zagged
As Messiaen saw it, the real revolution in 20th-century music had been launched not by an Austrian Jew but by a Frenchman, Claude Debussy,...
When Obsession With The Great Book Makes Writing One Impossible
The bibliophobia of the title, Chihaya assures us, only “occasionally manifests as an acute, literal fear of books.” More often, it “develops as a...
School Censors Play, Students Write Anti-Censorship Play And Win State Award
School play gets canceled for "inappropriate content". In response students write , their own anti-censorship play skewering the school district, sells out performances, and...
Multi-Generation Musicians. What Accounts For Them?
If genes and grit are not entirely responsible for the persistence of professional musical families across generations, what else matters? There are several possibilities....
Report: America’s Choruses Are Doing Well
Organizations across disciplines operated at a small deficit for the first time in five years in 2023. Choruses, by contrast, were still operating at...
Opera America’s State Of Opera Report
The key findings of the Annual Field Report are drawn from the fiscal year 2023 data submitted by OPERA America’s Professional Company Members (PCMs) in the...
Behold The Evolution of “Extreme” Marching Band
Marching band is more than a pastime. It’s an extreme sport. The real reason the students rehearse so hard isn’t to play well at...
What Eventbrite User Data Say About Audience Behavior Trends
Eight in 10 event-goers are planning to attend either the same number of events, or more, compared to last year.
Gen Zs, in particular, are...
Contemplating The Mortality Of All Things
Only recently has the human collective begun accepting the fact it is itself mortal. We now appreciate that events unfolded for aeons before us...
Parents Jailed For Starving 17-Year-Old Child For Ballet Lessons
She weighed just 60 pounds (27.3 kilograms) – about the same size as a 9-year-old. Last month her parents, an Australian couple in their...
Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Indigenous Advisors Quit En Masse
The advisory circle, formed in 2018, was intended to make Canada's oldest ballet company "a more equitable, diverse and inclusive organization," the ballet's website...
The Meaning Of Red
Red is the color we wear when we want to be noticed, the one that appears in the most national flags, the one that...
Why Theatre Is Devolving Into Uselessness
Does anyone actually read theatre reviews? National newspapers continue to slim down arts sections. Theatre coverage, with confined geography, is lucky to survive with...
