Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Boston’s Faneuil Hall Came To Embody The Complicated Idea Of America
Figures from every corner of politics have used the hall for events and rallies, amplifying the legend “that this is where the idea of...
The Role Of Public Philosophy In Difficult Times
The practice of public philosophy is thriving today in a surprising number of forms. Different approaches give rise to meta-level questions about the nature...
Tracking The Rising Costs Of Streaming Subscriptions
In the audio-visual world, they have a name for the phenomenon depicted above – where rival platforms repeatedly increase their prices, inspiring their competitors to...
NBCUniversal, Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery, DirecTV and Comcast Team Up On New Ad Platform
Universal Ads, as the new venture is called, was announced Monday as a collaborative effort to combat the domination of Google, Meta and other...
What Two YouTubers’ Stories Tell Us About The New Economics Of Creativity
Colin Furze demonstrates that in certain corners of the creative economy an individual with minimal overhead can work on select attention-catching projects and earn...
Can Animals Make Art?
If we take art to be something that is beautiful and consciously created – and animals consciously create things that look like art –...
Ingesting Writing For Translation, Transformation
When considering writing as a function of the body, we face the work’s physical, irreplicable quality. Stories and poems can be shared, but voices cannot; languages...
Why Even Thinking About Utopias Seems Remote
When national politics is becoming increasingly polarised, global conflicts are escalating to new temperatures, and the toll of the climate catastrophe grows deadlier, the...
The Role Of Beauty In Science
Over the past three years, we have studied thousands of scientists on three different continents, asking them about the role of beauty in their work. Our research left...
Can What You Eat Change Your Brain?
In a sense, yes. The most extraordinary property of the gut-brain axis is that it is plastic. In the same way that your brain...
Pushing Back Against The Pushback Against Social Justice and Art
In the current climate, I would argue there are few more urgent subjects for art than identity and contemporary politics, just as was the...
What MrBeast’s Game Show Says About The State Of Today’s Media
Beast Games exists to make you hate it and other people, and for you to keep watching regardless. In this, it’s an extraordinary success. -...
Remembering American Avant-gardist Richard Foreman
Foreman’s idea of theater, born in opposition to the mainstream, was an acquired taste that some of the most rigorously inventive sensibilities couldn’t get...
Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of The Broken Copyright System
If Sherlock Holmes really is the last of the classic fairy-tale heroes, he may also be the first to have been protected by modern...
Report: Getty Villa Museum Gardens in Palisades Are On Fire
An unidentified official on LAFD radio said that the Getty Villa Museum was “catching on fire” shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday. - Los Angeles...
Human Use Of Alphabets May Be Much Older Than We Thought
“The longer the sequence of symbols, the more likely that writing is involved,” Schwartz said, distinguishing alphabetic writing from semasiography, which refers to “signs...
Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Reopens After Hiatus And Reorganization
Following an 18-month hiatus, Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre plans to reopen on January 30 with new leadership, a new business model, and a newly renovated lobby. The 36-year-old company,...
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Why Audiences Struggle With Contemporary Music
He has an explanation: “People feel trapped. If you go to an art gallery and there is a picture you don’t like, you can...
Edinburgh Festival Warns That Funding Cuts Puts Festival At Risk
Nicola Benedetti, a Grammy-winning classical violinist who became the festival’s director in 2022, said in an interview with the Guardian she feared the creative arts...
Study: No, Monkeys Couldn’t Randomly Manage To Type Shakespeare
It concludes that there is simply not enough time until the universe expires for a defined number of hypothetical primates to produce a faithful...
What Fan Culture Reaction To Celebrity Deaths Teaches Us About Dealing With Grief
Fan communities coping with a celebrity loss do several things that help their members feel supported and connected to one another, which often also...
How The Reviled Nietzsche Was Rehabilitated
After the war, Nietzsche was practically radioactive. In the newfound German Democratic Republic (GDR), where he was officially declared a “pioneer of fascism,” his...
An Alternative History Of The 20th Century Literary Canon
The unexpectedness of some of Frank’s choices is just what makes the book entertaining. He tackles some 32 novels, in a series of case...
AI Suggests Iconic Painting Wasn’t By Raphael
The team used pictures of verified Raphael paintings to "train the computer to recognize his style to a very detailed degree, from the brushstrokes, the color...
Berkeley Arts Organizations Are In Distress
These are desperate times for art organizations and music venues in Berkeley, pummeled by rising labor and production costs and lower theater attendances. -...
