Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Remarkable Resurgence Of Otto Klemperer
From the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s, Klemperer was among the most prolific conductors on record. Yet around 1950 everyone thought he...
Reimagining “Miss Saigon.” Possible?
Yet it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Orientalist kitsch was integral to the show's commercial appeal. Remove the defamiliarizing frisson of the exotic...
How Hollywood Lost The Point Of What They’re Doing
Under pressure to deliver to Wall Street, too many CEOs have lost the plot of their own movie. They are not running companies to...
300-Year-Old Minaret Destroyed In Basra To Make Way For Road
The demolition of the 300-year-old minaret of a mosque in southern Iraq last week to make way for a road extension has drawn outrage...
The Piano Problem: Owners Fret About How To Get Rid Of Them
Go to any online sales site and you'll find dozens of ads for free pianos — mostly large wooden upright instruments that are around...
The Battle For Nashville’s Creative Soul
Every city changes. But the transformation of Nashville—which began a decade ago, and accelerated exponentially during the pandemic—has stunned the people who love the...
Has Hollywood Abandoned DEI?
After the sudden exits of top diversity and inclusion executives at Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Netflix and the Motion Picture Academy in the past...
The TV-ization Of Social Media (Why TikTok Works)
By design, TikTok encourages different behaviors from those prompted by other social networks. “They say they check Facebook, and they check Instagram and they...
Susan Jaffe On Reinventing ABT
When it comes to the classics, one of the biggest hurdles to bringing new audience members to the ballet is that people are initially intimidated...
Why Poetry?
The best thing to do is just start with any poem, because what matters about poetry is not what other people think of it...
Kansas City Symphony’s First Black Tenure-Track Musician Talks About What Happened
“To deny tenure to such a gifted musician on the basis of some unsubstantial and, frankly, unconvincing reasons seems highly suspect. Any shortcomings in...
The Transformative Louis Langrée
At 62, Langrée has never been one of the world’s most famous or sought-after conductors. His career has been a steady climb of prestige...
Major Met Museum Patron’s Home Raided
Investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office have carted away 71 looted artifacts from Shelby White’s home in the past two years, though they have not...
Studios Proposed: Scan You Once, Use AI Version Of You Forever, Free
“They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their...
How Barcelona Became A Design Capital
In the spring of 1992, Barcelona was in the throws of Olympian joy and design fever. After 36 years of dictatorship, Barcelona’s nomination as...
A Movie About Theatre Camp That Helps Explain Theatre
Earnest and ridiculous in equal measure, Theater Camp makes clear that places like AdirondACTS are microcosms of magical weirdness. The film isn’t just a starry-eyed ode...
Why The Death Of Newspaper Dance Reviews Has Big Impacts On The Field Of...
Critical dialogue in dance today takes many forms, none in short supply. But reviews of live dance performances, in print or online, in publications with at...
Thousands Of Writers Sign Letter Urging AI Companies Not To Use Their Work W/O...
According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000. And writers' incomes declined by 42% between...
Pittsburgh Opera Company Takes Stock, Decides To Reinvent
Pittsburgh Festival Opera, is a “summer festival company” that typically puts on a few small-scale productions during the summer months and provides a training...
David Brooks: Why AI Won’t Replace Us
Over the past few months, I’ve become an A.I. limitationist. That is, I believe that while A.I. will be an amazing tool for, say, tutoring children...
Science Fiction Is Chockablock Full Of Aliens. But “Alien” Is So Hard To Comprehend,...
“A truly alien alien is so incomprehensible that stories about them just become stories about human beings,” Jaime Green writes in her new book, The Possibility of...
Amapiano – Can The South African Dance Music Craze Go Global?
In Zulu, amapiano means “the pianos,” or “piano people,” and the genre’s name refers to its origin as a jazzy variant of house music—at parties around...
Why Are Published Editions Of Under-represented Composers So Riddled With Errors?
Some inaccuracies were very obvious, while others needed more detailed detective work, and only became apparent as we got to know the music more...
Inside Philadelphia’s Thriving Mural Culture
“There was this idea that, OK, industry and maybe some people left this city, so now it’s our playground." (the city’s population declined from...
AI Is Coming For Us. So What Could Go Wrong?
With all this talk of killer robots, humanity may be overlooking the more immediate dangers posed by AI. - The Atlantic
