Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Why Have A Festival If It Doesn’t Take You Out Of The Ordinary?
“There’s no point coming here just to do one thing. Blowing in and out doesn’t work – financially! Performers get all that, and they...
What “The Truman Show” Got Right About Technology 25 Years Ago
Through Truman’s story, the movie predicted, with eerie acuity, the rise of reality TV, the transactions of social media, the banality of surveillance. But...
“Mao’s Last Dancer” To Retire
Li Cunxin, who found international fame for his remarkable rise from rural China to become one of the world’s leading ballet dancers, has announced...
Russians Revive Mariupol’s Bombed Theatre As Russian Culture Showcase
“This theater is being reborn and has restored its great reputation,” said Aleksandr Rostov, the theater’s new, Russian-appointed creative director in a video to...
Global Movie Box Office Up 27 Percent In The First Quarter Of 2023
Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) saw the largest spike in B.O., with a 32-percent year-on increase during the first quarter of the...
How AI Will Democratize Creativity
We lack the skill to move imagination from the brain to the real world, and, while we like to say "You can do anything...
A New “Generation-Changing” Museum For India
The new Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is due to open in 2026, near Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport. It will be “India’s national modern...
The Remarkable 2,700-Year-Old Rock Paintings Just Discovered In Sweden
The designs were made through a laborious process of smacking stones against the granite rock that exposed an underlayer of white. This color, in...
Why Writers Have Difficulty Talking About The Working Class
“There’s a class issue that we don’t always talk about in writing and publishing, where you need to be able to afford this life....
TV’s Tired Script Formulas Are Perfect For AI, Aren’t They?
Let’s get to the other side. After analyzing forty years’ worth of sitcom scripts and studio-audience laughter and applause levels, A.I. has unlocked the...
Is This True? Are We All Really Hardwired To Our Primitive Past?
“We have seemingly been hardwired with a number of cognitive biases that impede our ability to take appropriate action to address seemingly distant, gradual...
How Parking Explains American Cities (And What To Do About It)
You imagine the American city in the 1940s and ’50s and you think so many challenges being confronted—substandard housing, deindustrialization, racial strife, pollution—all this...
The First AI Magazine (It’s Soulless)
The ability to see something you hadn’t expected is what separates printed products from the internet. It’s why those who love magazines do so...
What We Should Learn From Loss
We fail all the time, in things large and small, yet our biggest failure may be that, as a rule, we don’t understand failure. And...
Canadians Want To Promote Canadian Content. Problem: What Is Canadian Content?
Nobody seems happy. The way the issue splits along political lines feels so incoherent, it’s almost arbitrary. - The Walrus
Public Libraries Have Become… Social Work Agencies?
Vicky Varga, a twenty-four-year veteran of Edmonton Public Library, described how the city had moved toward fully integrating social work into the activities of...
Satire Seems To Be Dead (For Now)
As the world became almost unfathomably strange, many people reacted by demanding seriousness; social and political critics understandably turned very sober. And this too...
In The Age Of AI, Form Seems To Be Making A Comeback
AI-driven image-making—far from heralding some future post-human development—appears to be reviving long-dormant visual strategies that dominated the arts, and art theories, of the past....
The Enduring Allure Of Concert Halls That Make An Architectural Splash
Sydney cemented the idea that grandiose political and architectural ambitions — some would say hubris — can merit the expenditure of much larger sums...
Taliban Sell Tickets To Bamiyan Buddha Site They Destroyed In 2001
With the group now back in power, Bamian holds new symbolic and economic importance to the cash-strapped region: Officials see the Buddha remnants as...
How The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Found Itself In A Crisis
“We've been basically in a recovery mode since the 2020-21 pandemic. And I think that's the real reason why things have been stressed more....
Liverpool Vies To Be New Home Of English National Opera. Process Is “Complicated,” Says...
In a letter to Culture Minister Lord Parkinson, Mr Rotheram and Liverpool City Council leader Liam Robinson said it would be "an honour" to...
Streaming Companies Spent 100s Of Millions Of Dollars On Content. Worth It?
In this country, nothing indicates cultural importance more than cash, and seeing this much of it handed out to creators of television said as...
David Remnick Remembers Robert Gottlieb
Gottlieb, who died on Wednesday, at the age of ninety-two, may have been the most important book editor of his time. Caro was just...
Our Metaphors For Language Shape How We Think
For example, if we talk about “wasting” or “saving” time, we treat time as if it were a commodity. Or, if we say that...
