Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Russian Troops Looted Kherson Museum Before Fleeing
Russian soldiers looted nearly 15,000 objects from the Oleksiy Shovkunenko Kherson Art Museum and other cultural venues in the region two weeks ago. - Artnet
UK Arts Funding Cuts Will Hurt Most Those They’re Supposed To Help
It’s pure vandalism to withdraw funding from institutions that are nurturing new talent. People who think that the arts are for the elite alone...
How Teaching Math Got Caught In The Culture Wars
"I’d argue that the spectre haunting today’s discord over math education is a growing suspicion of the equity-based movement of educators who, as in...
US Patent Office: No, Mariah Carey Can’t Trademark “Queen Of Christmas”
While Carey might’ve filed a petition to be the one and only “Queen of Christmas,” that royal title will remain free for anyone to claim this...
The “Velveteen Rabbit” As A Philosophy
First published in book form in 1922 by a little-known novelist named Margery Williams Bianco, it has now been in print for a century,...
Police Thwart Glue Vandals At Oslo Museum
The painting was not harmed, although some glue residue was left on the protective glass. The room was then emptied and closed to the...
Vandals Claiming To Be “Climate Activists” Throw Maple Syrup On Painting At Vancouver Art...
Police said no arrests have been made, but officers are investigating the incident. - CBC
Report: Numbers Quantifying Declines In Arts Attendance In 2020-21
Relative to pre-pandemic times, the 2021-22 season saw a 14 percent decline in the amount of seats sold, a 17 percent reduction in paid...
Conductor David Robertson Returns To Composing
My composition chops were extremely rusty and needed buckets of WD-40 put on them. What was interesting is how once you get started, you...
Why Do We Value Consistency? Consistently Wrong Isn’t A Good Outcome
Consistency isn’t of value, in and of itself. If the outcomes are bad, the fact that they were arrived at by employing a consistent...
Disasters Are On The Rise. We’re Going To Have To Think About Them Differently
Disasters compress time, and in a world besieged by them, dramatic shifts occur: For planners and architects and officials, whose work typically unfolds over...
Misty Copeland Shares What It Took To Become A Star Dancer
"It wasn't until ballet came into my life that I started to feel that I could be a person, a person in the world,...
Elon Musk’s Twitter Show: Does He Know What He Bought?
I’ve watched Elon Musk treat Twitter as a comedy club on the one hand, and the universal town square on the other. What he...
Seattle’s Once-Thriving Music Scene Is Broken. How To Fix It?
Seattle was a thriving, energizing, musical city. It was synonymous with Sub Pop and KEXP. It was home to literally hundreds of rock, pop, hip-hop, soul,...
Brian Eno Explains Art To You
What happens when you go look at a painting you’ve never seen before? What I think happens is that you’re seeing it in the...
Louisville Orchestra Names Graham Parker Chief Executive
Parker brings more than 25 years of experience in leadership roles at a range of arts organizations. Most recently, he was the president of Decca...
Jeff Bezos Says He’ll Give Away Most Of His Money. So How?
“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he said. “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It...
Science Defines The Modern Age, Right? So How Did We Get It So Wrong?
How is it that the dawning of the age of reason, which saw science and technology become preeminent in western culture, coincided with the industrial...
Maurice Sendak’s Dance Between Art And Music
Music was an essential ingredient in Sendak’s creative process. “The work can’t happen without music,” he said in 1994. “I think everything I’ve done...
Fresno Voters Approved A Measure To Spend Millions On The Arts. Now The City...
Measure P went before Fresno voters in November 2018 to add a 3/8th-cent increase to the sales tax for 30 years to benefit parks...
Historically We Have Been Defined By Our Geographies. That May Be Changing
Geopoliticians’ reluctance to reckon with the climate crisis comes from their sense that there are only two options: transcend the landscape or live with...
480,000 University Of California Academic Workers Walk Off The Job Over Pay
About 48,000 unionized academic workers across the University of California’s 10 campuses — who perform the majority of teaching and research at the state’s...
Why Do So Many New Movies Look Like Crap On The Big Screen?
As a practical matter, turning out movies that look worse in a theater than they might on a TV screen is a real problem...
The Science Of Violins’ “Phantom Notes”
The team found that all violins produced combination tones, but the oldest instruments produced the strongest ones. The magnitude of the most prominent combination...
Study: Rats Move In Time To Music
Researchers in Japan played Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K. 448) for 10 rats, and tiny wireless accelerometers affixed to the...