Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Did HGTV Come To Define Our House Aesthetic?
These bundled aesthetic commonalities aren’t just coincidences, and they can’t be entirely described as trends—at least not in the sense of bottom-up collective favor...
A North Carolina School District Removes Popular Sarah Maas Books
A favorite on TikTok’s “BookTok” community, the series has sold over 13 million copies worldwide, and been translated into 37 languages, according to Bloomsbury. A...
Britain’s Ruling Conservatives Seem To Have No Plan For The Wayward Arts Council
Conservatives used to be intelligent patrons of the arts. In the 1930s, you had the most sophisticated cultural operation of any political organisation in...
We Have Forgotten How To Disagree In The Arts
The list of such fundamental divisions is long, and it is synonymous with multicultural liberalism. For this, many democracies maintain two-party parliamentary systems. Goading...
Norman Lebrecht Goes To A Yuja Wang Concert And Sees The Future Of Music
That triggered a subversive thought: why can’t all solo recitals be like this? Why won’t Carnegie Hall enhance its pianists with works of Pissaro...
California Musicians Across The State Celebrate California
The 100-plus participating organizations, some large and wealthy, others neither, include professional orchestras, choruses, opera companies, youth orchestras, and educational institutions. - San Francisco...
How Revelations Of Buffy Ste. Marie’s Heritage Is Affecting Indigenous Culture
Suddenly, this story broke and everything we believed about her was called into question. There was no warning and no sensitivity to the impact...
An Initiative To Radically Change The Way Scientific Research Is Shared
It outlines a future “community-based” and “scholar-led” open-research communication system in which publishers are no longer gatekeepers that reject submitted work or determine first...
How Big-Publishing Consolidation Has Changed Fiction-Writing
In the conglomerate era, authors like Stephen King and Danielle Steel are pressured to become advertisements for themselves, even as much of the work...
News Consumption Trends — Mainstream Journalism Down, Opinion Channels Up
In the past 16 months, seven publishers crossed the one million subscriber mark to enter Press Gazette’s ranking for the first time – including...
Theatre’s Crisis Is Really A Demographic Issue
I have been told that staff, tasked to phone up lifelong supporters and subscribers who didn’t renew for the first time, had to be...
Should Theatre’s Performance Time Norm Be 6:30?
Six-thirty may not be a traditional starting time for theatre. But then in the 16th and early 17th-century, before the advent of the indoor...
How Story-Telling In Podcasts Is Different From Radio
The podcast market is increasingly interested only in those that take the listener on a journey from one episode to the next. Without a...
We Live In An Always-On World. What Does It Mean To Withdraw From It?...
Acts of disengagement are routinely met with scepticism, judgment and pushback in public discourse. What if we were to treat them instead as opportunities...
To What Extent Is Misinformation Changing How We Think?
Misinformation is most commonly defined as anything that is factually inaccurate, but not intended to deceive: in other words, people being wrong. However, it...
How Art Schools Are Approaching Artificial Intelligence
“It feels like the birth of photography all over again.” - Artnet
Scientists Believe Neural Networks Have Cracked Critical Essence Of Intelligence
Since the 1980s, a subset of cognitive scientists have argued that neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), aren't viable models of the mind because their architecture...
New Yorker Magazine’s Most-Popular Cartoon Ever Breaks Record For Sale Of A Cartoon
That comic, which has gone on to be the most reprinted in the magazine’s history, proves so enduringly popular that it recently sold at auction for...
Neuro-Study: Why We Communicate Less Well Over Video Conference
The research suggests online faces, with present technology, don’t engage our social neural circuits as effectively. - Neuroscience News
Why AI Doesn’t Understand Slang
Language models, in the most basic sense, represent our 26-letter alphabet in strings of numbers. Those digits might efficiently condense large amounts of information....
A Portland Oregon Theatre Lays Off Staff (Including Its Artistic Director) But Is Still...
It’s certainly arguable that the company overreached in pursuing such an extensive rebuild, rather than limping along in what was left of the old...
Expanding An Orchestra’s Mission To Community
At a time when many classical music and other traditional arts organizations are facing major challenges, a young conductor in Louisville, Kentucky, is expanding...
Biologist Turns Amateur Art Sleuth And Cracks An Art History Puzzle
“I would love it if someone published a paper about one of the three paintings confirming or refuting my findings, so we could start...
Right Wing Journalist Nominated To Lead Venice Biennale
Since coming to power last fall, Italy’s far-right leader Giorgia Meloni and her party the Fratelli d’Italia have been installing right-leaning candidates into leadership positions in...
Fascinating List – Here Are The Most-Banned Books In US Prisons
The list includes Amy Schumer’s memoir The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, flagged by Florida officials for graphic sexual content and for being...