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Parlez-Vous Screen? (online arts and other considerations)

May 1, 2020 by Douglas McLennan 4 Comments

So your workplace has shut down (your theatre, concert hall museum, stage, whatever). Now what? Moving online is the obvious play. And in the weeks since lockdown there has been a flood of artists going online, making content for the web or repackaging performances that have already taken place. Early efforts were encouraging. The Rotterdam Philharmonic did a "stay-at-home" "Ode to Joy" and … [Read more...]

Arts: Rebuild What? And Why?

April 30, 2020 by Douglas McLennan 22 Comments

I've been staring at this screen for several days (weeks, actually, if I'm being honest) trying to write about what the pandemic and the lockdown means for the arts. It's not that I don't have anything to say -- it's the opposite. Anything I begin to write seems reductive. There's too much to say and where to start? So this is maybe the start of a series of pieces on the topic. When everything … [Read more...]

Are The Arts To Blame For Donald Trump?

December 29, 2019 by Douglas McLennan 11 Comments

A few months ago I was at a conference of administrators of large arts institutions when a leading researcher in cultural trends made a bold claim: The election of Donald Trump is a result of the failure of the arts and culture sector. The point, he said, was that values expressed by the arts sector seem so at odds with the populist nationalist Trump wave that one could view the election not … [Read more...]

What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game?

October 23, 2018 by Douglas McLennan 2 Comments

The tide has turned on the tech revolution. Over the past year the breathless articles that used to accompany new tech innovations have dried up, replaced with dystopian concerns about the Dark Web, privacy, hacking, fake news, and the deadening and manipulative effects of social media addiction. Tech was going to disrupt everything: Even after the word lost its meaning from overuse, it … [Read more...]

Classical Music’s #MeToo Stories Are Just A First Step

July 30, 2018 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of the stories they put on the record were new; others have been open secrets for years. One of the latter stories - about Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil is not new at all. Back in 2007, the … [Read more...]

How a Beethoven Tweet Broke Our Twitter Feed (And Other Lessons About Social Media Today)

July 26, 2018 by Douglas McLennan 2 Comments

A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: "Time To Retire Beethoven's Ninth?" In the piece, John Terauds, who used to be the Star's staff classical music critic, suggested it might be time to put away the Ninth Symphony for a while. Why? In his words: We have the 19th-century ideal of strength in unity — … [Read more...]

Five Story Highlights From The Past Week 02.19.17: Trapped By PACs, New WTC As Cautionary Tale, Exploiting Humanities Workers

February 20, 2017 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Last Week: Have performing arts centers led us to a dead end?... The new World Trade Center in New York demonstrates much of what is wrong with building today's cities... The humanities only exist on the exploitation of its workers... Here's the structure that makes the Grammys racist... A pocket history of fake news. In case you missed it, ArtsJournal published Joe Horowitz's essay on the … [Read more...]

Join Us Today For A Livestream: Artistic Leadership In A Border City

February 17, 2017 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Following on Joe Horowitz's essay Lincoln Center Snapshot: Bing, Bernstein, and Balanchine Fifty Years Later and the five responses to his provocation, we're in El Paso, Texas today for a conversation about artistic leadership in a city literally divided in two - El Paso, Texas on one side of a border fence and Juarez, Mexico on the other side. The University of Texas, El Paso and the El Paso … [Read more...]

Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?

February 16, 2017 by Douglas McLennan 12 Comments

In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically to be a launching pad for the American performing arts, might have turned out instead to be a box canyon. Perhaps the buildings are to blame: the Met theatre is too big and unwieldy, and Philharmonic Hall and the State Theatre, despite renovations, haven't … [Read more...]

Are Orchestras A Ticket Or An Art? Maybe We’re Thinking About The (Made Up) Model Wrong

January 26, 2017 by Douglas McLennan 13 Comments

As recently as 1990, American symphony orchestras accounted for an average of 60 percent of their budgets in earned income. This meant, at the time, that if you weren't selling enough tickets (and other services) to make 60 percent, then you weren't considered healthy. A report in 1991 - The Financial Condition of Symphony Orchestras - conducted by The Wolf Organization, said that attendance at … [Read more...]

Five Highlights From This Week’s AJ: The Big Ideas You Need To Know, Says MIT

January 22, 2017 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

This Week: Trump, the arts, the culture budget and protest... Harvard ART school gets suspended...MIT's list of 10 things you need to know... Writers and money - the straight dope. Trump Inauguration And Artists: Obviously the biggest story this week was the American inauguration and the demonstrations the day after. There were dozens of stories pondering the role of art and artists in … [Read more...]

Killing NEA, NEH And PBS Is Just Collateral Damage In The Commodification Of American Values

January 20, 2017 by Douglas McLennan 22 Comments

So it begins. A report in The Hill, then picked up in the Washington Post, says that the Trump administration intends to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities and sell off PBS. It's part of a plan to cut some $10.5 trillion over the next decade. Zeroing out the culture budgets isn't about money; together, the NEA, NEH and PBS account for … [Read more...]

Context: Hollywood’s Political Bias? It’s Money

January 17, 2017 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Unquestionably, a majority of the people who work in Hollywood lean politically left. More than lean, in many cases. But how much of their politics makes it onto the big screen? Rory Carroll takes up the question in the Guardian, writing that: "the industry as a whole could disappoint those hoping for a liberal, inclusive wave from Los Angeles to counter rightwing populism from … [Read more...]

Five Highlight Reads From This Week’s AJ: Did Originality Steer The Arts Wrong?

January 15, 2017 by Douglas McLennan 3 Comments

This Week: The Trump era is a challenge to America's arts institutions... Artificial intelligence is teaching us how to better-design concert halls... How originality has failed art... The Metropolitans Museum and Opera are struggling... Is Canada becoming the first "post-nation" state? The Role Of Arts Institutions In The Era Of Trump: As what follows any seismic shift in the landscape, … [Read more...]

Five Notable Stories From This Week’s ArtsJournal – Blockbuster Mozart?

December 18, 2016 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

This Week: Mozart outsells every CD this year?... How artificial intelligence is changing thinking... Why should artists be entrepreneurs?... How the West dominated global culture... Zadie Smith speaks out about multiculturalism. Was Mozart The Best-Selling CD Of The Year? That's the claim. Universal Classics says that a major Mozart release this fall has sold 1.25 million CDs so far, more … [Read more...]

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Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

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Recent Comments

  • Douglas McLennan on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “Hi John: Yes – remember over the last decade how Big Data was going to change everything and drive every…” Nov 26, 07:46
  • John McCann on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “I haven’t read this book, yet your review triggered an insight about information shared within organizations and how so much…” Nov 26, 03:57
  • Richard Voorhaar on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “We have reached the point where the average American has no attention span. A 3-4 minute pop tune is all…” Jun 10, 11:22
  • Alan Harrison on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Brilliant piece, Doug. It’s why, in my own columns on LinkedIn and Medium, I may have become more strident recently…” Jun 8, 15:46
  • Tom Corddry on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Slick analogy. Social scientists estimate that 95% of everything we do is basically done out of habit, because it’s an…” Jun 7, 21:04
  • sandi kurtz on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: ““As for seat licenses in the arts – I think it doesn’t work unless demand is so spectacular you can…” Jun 1, 23:19
  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “I think the membership model is an interesting variant. And the web has gone back and forth on labeling its…” May 31, 07:42
  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “Thanks Gary. I originally had a section in this podcast discussing why the NYTs’ success hasn’t worked its way down…” May 31, 07:19
  • sandi kurtz on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “A couple of thoughts. The single subscription model, where you sign on to the entire run of the season, curated…” May 30, 23:57
  • Gary P Steuer on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “Loved the podcast Doug. Glad you included newspapers as an example of another business type that has pivoted towards subscriptions.…” May 28, 12:11

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  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting? April 23, 2022
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An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World
  • The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?
  • The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?
  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting?

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