Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Berlin Cuts €130 Million From Its Arts Budget
The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital. In 2021, Germany approved a...
K-Pop Has Been Fueling South Korean Protests
The sight of young people moving to K-pop’s electrifying beat has become part of the drama of this protest movement. Protest organisers are blasting out K-pop...
Handel’s “Messiah’s” Rocky Start
When the librettist obtained a copy of the score, in early 1743, he didn’t like it. “His Messiah has disappointed me,” he wrote to...
How UK Theatre Got To This Point (20 Years That Defined A Crisis)
Twenty years ago marked a turning point for the arts in the UK. And not a good one. - The Stage
Florence Open’s Vasari’s 16th Century Corridor Built For Medicis
The corridor, designed by the Renaissance-era architect Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned in 1565 by Cosimo I de’ Medici, the second duke of Florence, and...
Canada Proposes Resale Royalties For Visual Artists
Monday’s fall economic statement included the proposed update to the copyright act, which will give Canadian visual artists a slice of the proceeds if...
Is San Francisco’s Arts Scene Dying or Thriving
“There’s been a lot of conversation about a false doom narrative … surrounding our city’s art scene. I counter that assertion. I want to...
How Trump Used Comedy To Win
While Jimmy Kimmel cries and Jon Stewart rants, the right wing in the U.S. has successfully depicted itself as the new home for free speech and cutting...
The Frightening Power Of AI Agents To Manipulate Us
This is a moment that philosophers have warned us about for years. Before his death, philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett wrote that we face...
Another Way To Review The Year? Twelve Objects That Caught Our Attention
I’ve set out to perform the annual ritual of assessing and unpacking the year gone by through the objects that captured our attention. Here, then, is...
Lithuania Banned “Nutcracker” In Solidarity With Ukraine. Now It’s Back…
Darius Kuolys who was the first culture minister after a 1990 declaration of independence, said it was obvious that the Kremlin often exploited culture...
Botto, The AI Artist, Has Already Made $4 Million. Now He’s Getting A Personality
Botto is a decentralized semi-autonomous artistic agent created in 2021 by the German artist Mario Klingemann; Simon Hudson, a media entrepreneur; and Ziv Epstein, a computer scientist and designer....
How Encyclopedia Britannica Evolved (And Thrives) In The Age Of AI
Britannica has figured out not only how to survive, but also how to do well financially. Jorge Cauz, its chief executive, said in an...
Lin Manuel Miranda’s Daunting Task: Reinventing “Lion King”
The songs form the basis of the highest-grossing musical in the history of Broadway. Thirty years on they remain embedded in our collective consciousness, so Lin-Manuel...
When Arlene Croce Took On Bill T. Jones (When the Critic Famously Didn’t See...
In her contentious essay, Croce, one of the finest dance critics of the 20th century, railed against what she called victim art: “By working...
Times Square Was Turned Into A Giant Immersive Experience
Suddenly, at exactly 11:57 p.m., 92 electronic billboards all around Times Square stopped pulsating with ads for Coca-Cola, Broadway plays, and fashion brands, and...
Publishing World Divided On Using AI To Make Books
Spines said it aims to help a million authors bring their stories to life—so they can focus on writing great books while A.I. handles...
Four Things Humans Still Do Better Than AI
In speaking to hundreds of experts, consumers, and skeptics of AI over the past few years, four strongholds for humans keep coming up. -...
Skyscrapers Are Sinking Into The Sand In Miami
It examined many large buildings built on the strip, half of which were built in 2014 and after, and found that 35 had been...
Should The BBC Scrap Its License Fee And Go Subscription?
The successful roll-out of fast broadband in the UK has allowed streaming services — led by the US giants, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and...
The Curious Incuriosity Of Multi-Culturalists?
For all they like to talk about the “enrichment” that diversity brings, pro-immigration liberalism in Britain often insists on a studied lack of curiosity...
Diversify Curriculum? Aren’t The Classics Diverse?
One of the wellsprings of the English canon is, of course, classical literature. Where does this start? With Homer, who, if he existed, was...
Did You Know You Could Buy The Oldest Ten Commandments Stone Tablet?
Expected to sell for an estimated $1 to $2 million, the tablet fetched a whopping $5 million. - ARTnews
Reconsidering Schoenberg @150
We still don’t quite know how to sell Schoenberg. There is the scary modernist Schoenberg — inventor of the 12-tone system, replacing traditional harmony...
The Year And Reading About Dance
As in last year’s column, a couple of these books were published recently; the others earlier in the century. All, in one way or another,...
