Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Salman Rushdie On Violence And Culture
“For the authoritarian, culture is the enemy,” he added. “The uncultured and ignorant and tyrannical don’t like it. And they take steps against it,...
Wikipedia At 25: What The Internet Can Be
Perhaps the greatest compliment to Wikipedia at 25 years old is the fact that, if the fascists can’t buy it, then they’re going to...
Comic Con Bans AI Art
“Material created by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show. If there are questions, the Art Show...
Curator Resigns After Nan Goldin Acquisition Voted Down
A senior curator and two collections committee volunteers have resigned their posts at the Art Gallery of Ontario after the institution voted against acquiring a new...
Dallas Opera Raises Record $54M
More than 100 donors contributed to the campaign, with recent significant gifts from the Perot family, the Hamon Foundation, the Vansickle Family Foundation, Cece...
Minneapolis Arts Organizations Join General Strike Today
“We’re pausing operations to recognise the weight of this moment in our community and to care for our employees and people in the Twin...
Ghost Light: When Theater’s Cast Goes Digital Forever
Simon Stephens' mixed-reality experiment at The Shed asks the existential question: if actors perform in cyberspace and no one applauds, is it still theater?...
Author Declares Culture Dead, Publishers Still Printing Books
W. David Marx diagnoses 25 years of creative stagnation in a new cultural history. Presumably the irony of launching a fresh cultural critique about...
Amazon’s AI Authors Lack What Writers Need Most: Attitude
Machine-generated novels and coloring books are flooding the marketplace, but they're missing literature's secret ingredient—artistic ego. Turns out readers might actually miss all that...
AI Art’s Predictable Problem: The Cliché Machine Cranks On
As algorithms churn out endless variations on tired themes, human artists are discovering their secret weapon isn't perfection—it's the beautiful, messy unpredictability that no...
Justice System Meets Its Deepfake Moment
When seeing is no longer believing, Canadian courts face an existential crisis: how do you prove what's real when reality itself can be manufactured?...
The Remarkable Art In A Building The Federal Government Has Marked For Sale
What would happen to the murals is an open question, as removing them may prove difficult. Advocates for the building fear that without protections...
The Wrong Way To Popularize Classical Music
In execution, this theory works very simply: Don’t change the music; change the way you deliver it. Do the opposite of what institutions are...
The Real Battle For The Smithsonian
Americans argue about the Smithsonian far more than we would if only its possessions mattered. When our museums of record tell us a story,...
Science Peer Review Journals Are Being Swamped By AI Slop
For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture. Now they’re...
Napa Art Museum Selling Its Estate Because Of Financial Pressures
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a...
Snubs In This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The overlooking of the Good Witch was truly Wicked. Then again, crowd pleaser Wicked: For Good got basically nothing overall, so maybe it’s time to reconsider that...
La Scala Finished 2025 With Record Box Office
La Scala closed 2025 with record ticket sales of over €40 million (+7.3% compared to 2024). Added to this is the record revenue of...
Hollywood’s “Woke” Era Has Emphatically Ended
For anyone fantasizing about Hollywood as some liberal bulwark, though, the 2024 election brought that idea to an abrupt halt. The industry’s era of...
Will The Met Opera Sell Its Chagalls?
New York’s Metropolitan Opera is facing a serious financial crunch, and may sell two beloved Marc Chagall murals to help fill the gap—but if it does, it will...
Hundreds Of Artists Warn About AI Slop
Around 800 artists, writers, actors, and musicians signed on to a new campaign against what they call “theft at a grand scale” by AI...
The Messy Details Of Extracting Washington National Opera From The Kennedy Center
Extracting the endowment after 15 years of operating under the auspices of the Kennedy Center will take more work—and a lot of lawyers. “It...
San Francisco Ballet And “Anticipatory Obedience”
Trot out the national anthem, the flag or a John Philip Sousa march, they believe, and it’s like a free exclamation mark to whatever...
Women-Centered Fantasy Is Fueling The Publishing Industry
Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female...
Philly Art Museum’s Rebrand Needs a Rebrand (And Might Get It)
Nothing says "we nailed it" quite like forming a task force to fix your fresh new identity while quietly showing your chief marketing officer...
