Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Spotify Is Ruining (Not Saving) Music
While music discovery used to be a social event, now most of us cower to simply accepting whatever the Spotify algorithm feeds us. While...
How Learning To Improvise Freed My Mind
As a classically trained flutist, I expected to feel unmoored without structure. But improvisation has made space for a freedom I didn’t know I...
How AO Scott Morphed From Writing About Movies To Pondering Poetry
For the past five months, he has been the nation’s most prominent poetry critic, writing a monthly column that uses the Times’ interactive technology...
LA Philharmonic Makes Its Coachella Debut
The Los Angeles Philharmonic led the charge into their first Coachella performance on Saturday with the "Ride of the Valkyries," helmed by Venezuelan conductor...
Will AI Save Or Kill Journalism?
The more closely you look at the profession of journalism, the stranger it seems. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than fifty thousand people...
The Strange Limbo Of TikTok In The New World Order
TikTok already existed in a kind of limbo before last week, but now its strange state of in-betweenness is intensified: it is both alive...
Is This Vermeer’s Last Painting?
Until recently the Kaplan painting had been considered to have been completed between 1670-72. That dating has now been revised, with Wheelock stating it...
Time To Refocus The NEH And NEA?
This is where the N.E.H. and N.E.A. would serve Mr. Trump well: not only correcting “woke” excesses, but also providing an elite counterpart to...
The Prado Has Enlisted AI To Count People In Paintings
The Prado hopes that actually knowing exactly how many people are in these crowded scenes will help us better understand these paintings, and how...
Tranquil Music Of Intensity
Hania Rani, 34, has become a shooting star in a genre of pop-inflected minimalist music often referred to as neoclassical, or alt-classical... “It’s not...
Data On The Relationships Between Arts And Building Community
Communities with greater access to arts organizations have: 33% more volunteers supporting nonprofit organizations, 7% more active voters who are registered and eligible for voting, 3%...
A Musician Wrote To The New Kennedy Center Director. He Responded
“I’m not sure why he chose to react to my email with such hostility, but I think it’s important for people to read this...
A Case For Trump’s Smithsonian Order On Depicting History
Trump's order asks to avoid “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort” and “rewrite” America’s history and “inappropriately disparage” heroes, and to foster “unity”...
Can This Man Save Iconic Atlantic Records?
The world of the all-controlling label is changing, and Atlantic Records—historically among the top three labels—has struggled to launch hot new global superstars. Atlantic’s...
Has The Met’s Pivot To Contemporary Opera Fizzled?
Signs of financial catastrophe are on the horizon. Gelb has twice dug into the Met’s anemic endowment, withdrawing up to $70 million out of a...
The Smithsonian’s Notion Of History Is At Odds With Trump. So Now What?
The idea that American history is polyphonic and unflinching, a warts-and-all story relevant to all Americans, is so deeply embedded in the Smithsonian that it is...
The “Goodbye Line” Pay Phones To Say Goodbye In LA
"You use a pay phone in a different way than you use a cellphone. It's not in your pocket. You go and do this...
How We Figure Out Whether The Work Was Worth It
These changing patterns show that one’s relationship with effort isn’t simple. For many people, there’s a sweet spot – a little effort might make...
The West, In Its Abundance, Has Gotten Intellectually Lazy
In place of pain, we have ennui, the quintessential modern condition. It follows directly from overabundance: an endless stream of video “content” or chocolate...
Thomas Pynchon’s First New Book In A Decade
Shadow Ticket, due out in October, will be the American novelist’s 10th book. Like his previous two, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013),...
So Much Literature Is Built On The Premise Of Sexual Jealousy. But Today’s Students…
"Sexual jealousy is an emotion that was once thought to be so universal, such a commonplace experience of a person in love, that no...
Gatsby At 100 Still Resonates
Today the wealth gap is just as significant as it was in Gatsby’s time, but now everyone has a phone. No matter our background,...
Foreign Artists Are Reconsidering Touring In The US
It’s never been easy or cheap for global acts to tour here, but visa fees are up and wait times have risen substantially over...
Global Art Sales Down In 2024
Global sales of art and antiques have fallen for a second consecutive year, declining by 12% in 2024 to an estimated $57.5 billion, according...
The Key To Courage In Uncertain Times
Paul Tillich defines “the courage to be” as “the ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of...
