Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Complexity: How Do You Measure AI?
AI measurement is a new field, and everything is still under contention—not just how we test but what we should be testing for. - The...
How We Know What We Know: What Is Common Knowledge?
Common knowledge — awareness of mutual understanding — can explain the emergence of social-media shaming mobs, academic cancel culture and revolutions that seem to erupt...
1000 Artifacts Stolen From Oakland Museum In Early Morning Heist
Stolen items include Native American baskets, jewelry, laptops, historic photographs and intricately carved ivory tusks. - Los Angeles Times
LACMA Employees Unionize
Employees at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced Wednesday that they are forming a union, LACMA United, representing more than 300 workers...
Our Post-Reading Generation
If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft...
Listening To Music On Headphones Has Disrupted Our Culture
The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone...
Some People Can’t See Mental Images
Their whole lives, they had heard people talk about picturing, and imagining, and counting sheep, and visualizing beaches, and seeing in the mind’s eye,...
Art In The Time Of AI: Just What Does “Owning” Art Mean?
Archetypes belong to everyone: that’s why art galleries and libraries and arts councils receive public funding; that’s why Top 40 radio plays a Friday-morning...
Cult Film Case Study: Rocky Horror Picture Show
A cult film is born through ritualistic traditions of audience attendance that must occur in a public, social screening setting like a movie theatre....
TS Eliot And The Impression Of Having Read Everything
Eliot was not only a prolific, but also a powerful prose writer. Impressively, he emerges even in the earliest of this work as if...
Judge Rules Authors’ Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI Can Proceed
In issuing his ruling, Judge Stein compared George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones to summaries of the book created by ChatGPT. The judge wrote that a...
What Hollywood Gets Consistently Wrong When It Depicts Broadway Genius
Artistry is what the ’40s biopics get most wrong. Not just the facts, though the depictions of composition, collaboration and show-making are boldly inaccurate....
A Piece Of Broadway History Disappears: The Cast Change Inserts In Programs
“I think the understudies, the swings, the standbys and the alternates do so much work, with so little recognition, so much of the time...
Big Foundations Band Together To Pump $50 Million Into Literary Arts
Seven deep-pocketed philanthropic foundations are coming together to help fill in the gaps. The coalition announced on Tuesday the creation of the Literary Arts...
Trump Administration Makes Emergency Appeal To Supreme Court To Fire Head Of The US...
The administration’s newest emergency appeal to the high court was filed a month and a half after a federal appeals court in Washington held that...
Does AI Threaten Our Ability To Perceive The World?
Many people invoke a distinction between illicit uses of A.I. (such as the composition of entire drafts) and innocent auxiliary functions — outlining, for...
Trump Fires Entire Design Commission Tasked With Reviewing Capital Region Projects
The commission, which was established by Congress more than a century ago and traditionally includes a mix of architects and urban planners, is charged...
Just How Vulnerable Are Art Museums To Theft?
Many museums do have security systems in place to prevent similar heists, but they aren’t always foolproof. Unfortunately, in the case of the Louvre,...
Steppenwolf @50: Career-Changing Theatre
Steppenwolf is embarking on its 50 anniversary season as one of America’s pre-eminent theater companies. An invitation to join its storied ensemble — a...
NPR And The Corporation For Public Broadcasting Are Fighting
Hearings continue in NPR’s lawsuit to block the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s distribution of $57.9 million to the newly formed Public Media Infrastructure (PMI). - InsideRadio
A White House Historian Talks About The East Wing
The house was designed to look like a domestic residence, not like the palace of a king or the compound of an autocrat or...
Misty Copeland Speaks About Her Next Act
Two days after confetti rained down on Copeland, she spoke about her career at Ballet Theater and what comes next. - The New York Times
How Pittsburgh Ballet Is Bucking a Trend And Finding Success
In an attempt to cater to evolving tastes, bring in as many attendees as possible and expose the next generation to ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet...
An Evolution Of Intelligence. So What Is It Now?
The trajectory of intelligent life on this planet can be described as an evolution of verbs: to move, to reproduce, to hunt, to hide,...
Politics Is Changing The Ways History Is Being Taught In US Schools
Several major curriculum publishers have withdrawn products from the market, while others have found that teachers are shying away from lessons that were once...
