Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
By The Numbers: American Orchestra Programs Are Getting Dramatically More Diverse
The latest Orchestra Repertoire Report shows a 638% increase in music by women at our symphony halls in the past six years. The numbers for...
Playbill Gets A New Editor-In-Chief
Diep Tran will lead a largely new editorial team at Playbill. - Playbill
Are The Oscars As We Knew Them, Doomed?
The more important factor in the dwindling of the Academy Awards viewership is that the Academy has been hurting itself by doing its job:...
The Artist Who Travels America “Improving” Bad Hotel Art
At first, Mr. Powell says, the artistic mischief was a joke, a test of whether anyone would notice and a strike against the ubiquitous...
The Confidence To Know Our Own Ignorance
The better approach is to cultivate an appreciation for our ignorance, get comfortable with it and look at it very closely, disentangling it as...
Kennicott: Attacking Paintings To Protest Climate And Social Justice Policies?
All this is misdirected and counterproductive. It makes the urgency of the crisis seem ridiculous to people who are already disinclined to give credence...
Seattle Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Departs For Chicago
Braden Abraham joined Seattle Rep in 2002 as an artistic intern, holding multiple artistic staff positions at the company, including seven years as associate...
This Small Publishing House Keeps Winning Nobels, Bookers…
Jacques Testard said that he would think it “very silly” if people called Fitzcarraldo the home of the Nobel. “It’s not like we have...
How Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Has Changed The Orchestra
She could probably now have any orchestra she wanted. But at the moment she doesn’t want any of them. She comes from a tightly...
Removing Notes From Mendelsohn To Demonstrate Plight Of Whales
Hebrides Redacted successively removes notes from the 10- to 11-minute overture in proportion to the decline in humpback whale populations over many decades. A short...
The Blatant Propaganda Of Action Movies
For an American, it can be easy to forget how much ideology is packed into the genre — until you watch a film from...
For Black Writers: A “Representation” Trap
Our current problem isn’t an insufficient amount of Black representation in literature but a surfeit of it. And in many cases that means simply...
Broadway’s Edgy Revival Of Oklahoma! Has Encountered Fierce Audience Reception Around America
Some performances of the Tony-winning production have continued amid clamorous walkouts or loud booing; one ended with a patron running from their seat and...
World’s Architects Are Flocking To Saudi Arabia To Try Their Most Inventive Ideas
For architects, Saudi Arabia has become Shangri-La, a place to test their wildest and wackiest ideas. - The Wall Street Journal
London’s Frieze Show Thrives Despite UK Challenges
Britain’s premier contemporary art fair seemed to demonstrate, by sheer weight of numbers, that London’s contemporary art trade is alive and thriving, despite Brexit, a domestic...
How The Insufferably Bland Barney Became A Cultural Sensation
The love and togetherness wasn’t “Barney” ’s problem. The character himself was uniquely unnerving—more Grimace than T. Rex, somehow dopey and condescending at once—and some of the...
LACMA’s New Home Is Halfway Done
The museum also announced Thursday that its $750-million fundraising campaign has reached the $700-million mark. The public-private partnership includes $125 million in Los Angeles...
Is There A Formula For Winning A Booker Prize?
In past years it has proven so unpredictable that even one of its winners likened the literary award to “a chicken raffle”. Referring to...
What Proust Thought About The Telephone
Initially, Proust likens telephone exchange operators to supernatural beings, capriciously presiding over the ‘miracle’ of telephony, but then he develops a more sombre analogy...
Technology Is Changing The Ways Theatre Artists Develop Ideas
"A lot of artists have digital records now online and the quality might not be great but you can to see just a little...
Will TikTok Shake Up The Music Streaming Business?
Music streaming would be integrated into its existing short video service. ByteDance already has a music streaming service in Resso, which is currently available...
TikTok Has Taken Over The Internet. It’s Worth Reflecting On How
TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million...
How This Year’s Unusual Venice Biennale Came Together
When I started working on it, I thought about a show that would be about metamorphosis and transformation. But the fact that the pandemic...
What Relationship Ought Russian Musicians Ought To Have With Putin’s Russia?
To begin with, you have to recognize how great a role Russian classical music plays in Putin’s foreign propaganda program. Most people don’t see that....
A New Scan Tool May Open Up How The Brain Works
“If you talk about neuroscience and how the brain works, there’s a lot of unknowns. It’s the wild west.” Ultrafast ultrasound could trace brain...