Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
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...
How To Save Movie Theatres: Be A Non-Profit?
Certainly not all nonprofit theaters are doing well, but the model has worked, at least so far, in places like the Berkshires, where a...
Finding That Line Between Copyright Protection And AI: A First Copyright Is Granted
Invoke has been trying to find that thin line to offer a product that would help artists create works that may be eligible for...
Boston Conducting Legend Benjamin Zander, Still Going Strong At 85
Zander has been educating musicians and audiences about classical music for five decades. During his master class, Zander interacts with both the audience and...
The Small Publisher Making Its Mark With Translations No One Was Paying Attention To
Since its founding a decade ago, Tilted Axis has gained a reputation for bringing out a wide range of groundbreaking, genre-defying literature in translation....
Are Things Really Better In The Music Business?
There’s never been a better time in history to be an intermediary, a middleman, a hanger-on, an aggregator, a shyster. For a guitarist or...
Lebrecht Wonders: Is It Okay To Review A Performance By A Musician Accused Of...
I cannot recall a recording of Le Rossignol that gave more tingle to my ears. So am I allowed to recommend it here without...
How Professional Licensing Has Warped American Culture
The institution of professional licensing has only grown in its reach and outlandishness. More and more new professions are becoming licensed, such as art therapists...
Kennicott: Can Trump Destroy The Kennedy Center?
Or will he use it in the usual way that authoritarians have used the arts in the past, as a vehicle for Trumpian...
Anne Midgette: The Kennedy Center Putsch
Even a president as attuned to the details of Kennedy Center programming as Nixon didn’t try to directly take a hand in running the...
How To bridge Humanities And Science? Try Math
We must recognise that the natural and the mental order of things go hand in hand. Neither can be fully understood without the other....
Australia’s Venice Biennale Scandal
Events have moved quickly since Thursday night when Creative Australia sensationally dumped the Sydney-based multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi as the nation’s representative for the 2026 edition...
The Trump Threat To Academic Research and Publication
Pressures from the Trump administration threaten an already beleaguered research enterprise that historically has thrived on doing basic research with minimal influence from partisan politics and...
An Important New Definition Of Fair Use In The AI World
In 2020, Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence for copyright infringement, alleging that Ross had scraped Thomson Reuters’ own law database, known as Westlaw, to create its database,...
