Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Defending JK Rowling
This campaign against Rowling is as dangerous as it is absurd. The brutal stabbing of Salman Rushdie last summer is a forceful reminder of...
The Case For Everything-Is-Math
The mathematics that's all around us, after all, doesn't come to us smoothly, in neatly formed themes or topics or packages. It's not separated...
The Culture Battle Over Snark And Superficial Knowingness
The current state of public discourse, if it’s even worthy of that name, is a strange fusion where smarm and snark wrestle and embrace...
Japan’s Anti-Disney Theme Park
Disney is, famously, a vast corporate content farm, with all artistic choices carefully examined by an assembly line of executives, marketers, focus groups, etc....
Theatre Audience Behavior Is Getting Worse, In Part Because Of… Marketing?
West End Theatres: “We are talking to them about marketing. So, when we market shows let’s not have phrases such as ‘best party in...
Why AI-Produced Art Makes Artists More Valuable
Instead of thinking of AI-generated art as a doomsday development — a cluster-bomb thrown by Big Tech into the heart of the art world...
Tate Britain To Rehang Its Collection For First Time In Ten Years, Giving More...
As part of its commitment to diversifying its collections, great female artists from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries – including some never seen...
Ukrainian National Orchestra Arrives At Carnegie Hall
The Carnegie performance was added last spring. The hall’s leaders heard about the tour and thought that hosting the orchestra would help show solidarity...
Streaming Has Upended How Writers Get Paid. New Contract Negotiations Will Be Tough
The streaming revolution has upended the old system of compensation. The syndication market for TV shows has all but disappeared, and residuals from movies...
Dallas Morning News Guts Its 19-Year-Old Spanish-Language Paper
Dallas County’s population is 40% Hispanic/Latino (1.05 million people) and 34% of residents speak Spanish at home, according to 2020 census data (though Latinos were also heavily...
Louvre’s Antiquities Scandal Raises Questions About Acquisitions (And France’s Moral Standing)
“Recent events question the quality of acquisition procedures and the functioning of its market. A reaction is necessary to guarantee France’s capacity for influence...
How Turkey’s Ancient Sites Fared In The Earthquake
At the ancient citadel of Aleppo, which was also recently damaged during Syria’s civil war, parts of an Ottoman-era mill collapsed along with parts...
How Robert Wilson Changed The Metropolitan Opera 25 Years Ago
This “Lohengrin,” so radical for the Met at the time, anticipated today’s broader range of directorial approaches there — like Willy Decker’s starkly symbolic “La...
The Terrible State Of The Modern Rom-Com
The connection between love interests, once a central element of the rom-com, has in recent years seemed secondary at best; now it’s actually plausible...
The Shocking Escalation Of Anti-LGBTQ Bills In 2023 In State Legislatures
In 2023, U.S. state legislatures managed to surpass the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were proposed 2022—i.e., what took lawmakers 365 days to achieve...
Pondering Self-Identification Of Race
I wanted to know what percent of all Americans change their race over the span of the panel, what percent of Americans who initially identify as...
What Houston’s Urban Sprawl Gets Right About Housing
It ain’t always pretty, but it is fascinating. As the policy tide turns to the end of single-family zoning and looser housing development regulations,...
Why We Still Need Classic Old Story Ballets
“If it’s lasted more than fifty years, it’s for a good reason. Think Mozart, Beethoven or The Beatles, they’ve stayed with us for a...
A Collector Who Plays His Own Rules
A compact man with a round face, Adam Lindemann, 61, is an unusual character in the art market, combining the passion and obsessiveness of...
NYC’s New Ohio Theatre To Close After 30 Years
The theater, originally known as the Ohio Theater and located off Wooster Street in SoHo, was founded as a nonprofit in 1993, and before...
The Paris Street Artist Who Became Ubiquitous
“I was invading public space with a mosaic of a small character whose role is to invade,” said the artist. A quarter-century later, it...
Art Collectives Were The Next Big Thing. What Happened?
Dreams of collectivity in the financialized and non-financialized zones of the art world have deep roots. But they were usually outside the door of...
Confronting Classical Music’s Burn-Out Culture
By stepping into a conservatory, we are encouraged to maintain packed-out schedules, work beyond the point of exhaustion, and have pristine social media accounts...
How Architects Fixed Geffen Hall’s Acoustics
While getting the sound of the orchestral hall right was a heavy lift, the architects and designers also had to contend with another problem in...
Public Television Is Irrelevant. Let’s Fix It
The time is right to revisit and revise the Public Broadcasting Act. A revised and reauthorized act would identify and direct resources to needs...
