Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Next Step In Broadening The Classical Music Canon
Something critical is getting overlooked amid the fervor with which classical music claims its new sense of conscience: the artistic value of the works...
Why Williamstown Theatre Festival Is Throttling Back Its Productions This Summer
The reason for the absence of theater amounts to what is essentially a public atonement for how the festival treated interns, apprentices and other...
UNESCO Chief Pledges To Help Rebuild Ukraine Culture
“in order to rebuild but also to redress the situation, it will be necessary to invest $6.9bn in the cultural sector in Ukraine over...
The Internet Archive Publishing Ruling That Will Change How Libraries Work
The judge wrote that the IA had simply “copied the Works in Suit wholesale for no transformative purpose and created ebooks that … competed directly...
How Governments Are Using Science Fiction To Predict Potential Threats
Not only can science fiction help us imagine a future shaped by new technologies, but it can also help us learn lessons about potential threats....
The Mystery Of Who Attacked Jascha Heifetz 70 Years Ago
Seventy years later, the man who attacked Jascha Heifetz has not been identified. A faction called Han oar Haivri (or Hebrew Youth), later linked...
Something To Consider: A Post-Human Economy
One estimate is that 99.9% of internet content will be AI-generated by 2030. The future, in other words, will be by bots and for bots....
Scientists: Human Memory Can Be Unreliable Almost Immediately
Scientists exploring our ability to recall shapes say people can make mistakes after just a few seconds – a phenomenon the team have called...
How Hip Hop Influenced Visual Art
Modern art was profoundly affected by jazz. You can see its influence not only on American artists such as Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott and Bob...
NPR Says It Will No Longer Tweet After Twitter Designated It “State-affiliated Media.”
While it remains unclear why the “Chief Twit” suddenly decided to place NPR in the same category as Chinese and Russian government propaganda, Musk reacted with an...
AI-Created Pop Culture Is Already Among Us
This idea of “illusory realism” struck me as apt. The A.I. content has the appearance of realism, without actual reality—reality solely as a style....
How Canada’s New Streaming Rules Will Promote Canadian Content
In conventional broadcasting, Canadian content quotas serve as a discoverability measure, ensuring that minimum amounts of Canadian programs are broadcast to the public. -...
My Students Are Struggling To Understand What They Read – Here’s Why
Too many of the undergrads taking the course I currently teach cannot read. They’re literate, of course, but unable to sit long enough to...
Can Bart Sher And Aaron Sorkin Make “Camelot” Relevant Again?
The initial production’s optimistic look at how ethical leaders harness power to forge better worlds seems hopelessly naive in this divided political environment. Or...
Small Florida Orchestra Cancels Concert Claiming Physical Threats From Its Music Director
“False and potentially alarming information was shared with our musicians by our musical director, Raffaele Ponti. This false information continued to spread, which led...
The Conflicting Complications Of De-Colonizing Classical Music
As Black and brown musicians, the question is not whether we can “solve” classical music’s issue with racism. Rather we wonder: Why do we...
More Research On Building Better Brains Through Participating In The Arts
"Children that are playing music, their brain structure actually changes and their cerebral cortex actually gets larger." - NPR
Fandom, Fake Friendships And The Real World
In 2021, psychologists found that forming parasocial bonds was strongly related to avoidant attachment. That is, people who tended to push others away in their day-to-day...
How To Fight Book Bans
A poll published found 61 percent were more concerned that “some schools may ban books and censor topics that are educationally important” than by...
An Architect Dreams Of Rebuilding A Ukrainian City As A City of The Future
The vision that he outlined was grand. It included restoring the largely bombed-out building of the regional administration as a functional monument, the way...
Dallas Theatres Are Struggling With New Realities
“It’s not like we want to sound the fire alarm. It’s not all doom and gloom. But the current situation is not sustainable.” - Dallas...
Why Journalists Say They’re Leaving Twitter But Aren’t
The first and most obvious reason is inertia. Journalists spent more than a decade building up their presences on Twitter, and they were never...
Broadway Loved Our “Oklahoma.” On The Road It Was A Completely Different Story
"You know how some movies bomb with critics but still make millions at the box office? We were the inverse of that. We had...
Urgently Needed: A Defense Of Humanism
It’s suddenly plausible to imagine that freethinking, that tradition of poking and prodding at all fixed ideas and institutions, will drift into obsolescence, because...
Man Arrested In Fake Vinyl Record Scheme
A businessman who made more than £1m selling fake vinyl records was caught after a fan of punk band the Clash complained that the...
