Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Pandora – The Music Streaming Service That Won’t Die
In its first decade, Pandora users had created eight billion stations, logged 74 billion hours of listening, and rated 55 billion songs with its...
Gaudi’s Sagrada Família Is Almost Finished. Is It A Masterpiece Or Is It Kitsch?
Gaudí’s structure is a head-spinning mixture of morphing geometrical forms, many inspired by nature. Its conical Art Nouveau pinnacles have the lumpy beauty of...
The Grass Roots Activists Fighting For The Right To Read
“This is who the Fifth Circuit is harassing: a mom of four with a Diet Coke in her hand, doing this while her kids...
In Xi’an, Anywhere You Dig, There’s History
Some estimate that the city’s subterranean history could stretch back 1 million years, with early human settlement from the Lantian Man and walled settlements...
Just How Can You Make Theatre In Ukraine During a War?
They have brothers and fathers in the war; they have family members cut off from them in the occupied Donbas. At one rehearsal, an...
The Remarkable Adji Cissoko
Over more than a decade with Lines, Cissoko has become such a part of King's creative process that it's now almost impossible to know...
National Parks Staff Are Removing Information About Slavery
Trump’s March executive order directing the Interior Department to eliminate information that reflects a “corrosive ideology” that disparages historic Americans. National Park Service officials...
North Dakota Columnist Who Wrote Famous Review of Olive Garden Dies At 99
In the review, she famously wrote in praise of the chain’s chicken Alfredo as “warm and comforting on a cold day.” “As I ate,...
The Art-Of-Endurance Artists
The subject has grown rarer as the art world has gotten more commercial, but there are still people who immerse themselves in projects that...
Rise Of The AI-And-I Essay
Call the genre the AI-and-I essay. Between April and July, the New Yorker published more than a dozen such pieces: essays about generative AI and the...
The Trump Administration’s Plan To Change How UCLA Is Run
The Trump administration’s settlement proposal to UCLA — which includes a nearly $1.2-billion fine over allegations of antisemitism and civil rights violations — seeks...
How Robert Redford Changed How The Film Industry Worked
“When I started the Institute, the major studios dominated the game, which I was a part of,. I wanted to focus on the word...
What About Those Works Of Art That Aren’t Bestsellers?
Headlines focus on that tiny segment of the arts that garners extraordinary numbers (whether readers, audience members, or dollars). The lucky writers and performers...
Five Countries Say They’ll Boycott Eurovision Contest If Israel Is Allowed To Compete
Israel’s recent participation has been a divisive issue in Europe and its broadcasting community ever since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza Strip...
Des Moines Metro Opera Under Fire For Working Conditions
It sounds like boot camp. An 89.5 hour workweek. Back to back 14 hour days. Overtime pay a rarity (and lack thereof legally sanctioned)....
YouTube Says It Has Paid $100B To Creators In The Past Four Years
“Twenty years ago, YouTube launched with the idea that everyone should have the opportunity to create and find a global stage. Since then, we’ve...
Is The Literary World Reforming Around Substack?
The digital froth of the 2010s—BuzzFeed, Upworthy, the ceaseless click-baiting and SEO-hunting—could be understood as a Bronze Age, and we are now after the...
Not Just The Humanities: Conspiracy Theorists Are Attacking Physics
In recent years, a group of YouTubers and podcasters have attracted millions of viewers by proclaiming that physics is in crisis. The field, they...
Traditional Dictionaries Are Dying Even As Interest In Words Soars
Definitions, professional and amateur, are a click away, and most people don’t care or can’t tell whether what pops up in a search is...
Two Blockbuster Collections To Open Sotheby’s New Home
They are "an estimated $400 million trove amassed by Leonard Lauder, chairman emeritus of the Estée Lauder, and an estimated $80 million collection from the Chicago...
Is Living “One Day At A Time” Really A Good Idea?
In some recovery programs, “one day at a time” is a mantra. This is a little like what E. L. Doctorow said about being a novelist:...
Philadelphia’s Brilliant New Home For Calder
Herzog & de Meuron has designed a deliberately “irrational” exhibition space, set largely below the Parkway and sheathed in reflecting steel, so that the...
A Short History Of Stupidity
The quality of stupidity is just, sort of, there; and there’s lots of it. Could you write a history of happiness, or bad luck, or knees? ...
The Current Dance Funding System Is Broken. What Needs To Replace It?
Universally, there is an urgent call for dance’s back offices to approach funding with the same creativity, vitality, and care that goes into artistic...
These Are Not The First Attacks On Education. But This Time The Attacks Are...
We are again confronting a massive attack on the very foundations of democratic education and, this time around, the stakes feel even higher. In...
