Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Why Do Writers Write?
There is often something compulsive about the act of writing, as if to cast out invasive thoughts. - The Paris Review
Are Museums Investing Their Money In Positive Ways?
hat about the ways the museums are using the money they already have: Are they using it to effect positive change in the world—or...
Who’s Running The Ship? San Francisco Makes More Major Changes In Its Leadership
For nearly a year now, SF Symphony has operated without a CEO and has been without a chief financial officer since January — not a time for making...
The Future Of Opera: Detroit?
It’s hard to overstate the unlikelihood of a director as innovative and internationally celebrated as Sharon taking the reins of a decidedly regional (and...
Richard Armstrong To Step Down As Guggenheim Director
He took the helm of the Guggenheim in 2008, following the resignation of firebrand director Tom Krens. Only the fifth leader in the institution’s...
And You Think You Have A Spam Problem (Twitter Removes A Million Accounts Each...
Human reviewers manually examine thousands of Twitter accounts at random and use a combination of public and private data in order to calculate and...
Hollywood’s Answer To The World’s Problems: Only Superheroes. So Ordinary Humans Are Powerless?
There’s a preponderance of copaganda and superheroes saving the day and a category of narrative best described as wealth-aganda — stories focused on the interior lives...
Romanticism Was Once A Challenging Dynamic Force. What Happened To Defang It?
It’s an irony that arguably the most radical movement in European thought should have been appropriated by the conservative forces of the market, but...
Warning: Current Streaming Model Is Rotten, Must Change
The longer that this new “business model” is allowed to operate, the harder it will be to change. I often think about how 25...
How Is It A Century-Old Book On Prose Is Still Popular?
Nearly a century old, it’s still avidly read and discussed in MFA circles, thanks to its author’s meticulous dissection of the devices of fiction,...
Man Recreates Banksy Mural Inside A Vending Machine To “Start Discussion”
"Like everyone else I felt a real pride that he'd come to Lowestoft and the surrounding area and done that (painted his artwork) because...
Until The 1880s Anthropologists Researched In Libraries. When They Finally Went Into The Field...
Instead of sitting in libraries, they began to study “primitive” cultures for themselves, across Africa, Asia and the Americas, living with their subjects for...
Authentication Wars: She Bought A Chagall. Years Later Sotheby’s Suggests She Sell. Panel Says...
To Ms. Clegg’s dismay, the expert panel in Paris declared her Chagall to be fake, held onto it and now wants to destroy it....
Journalists Prize Access To Sources. But Too Much
I’ve come to believe that one of most overrated aspirations in journalism is access. This is particularly true in any story involving people who...
It Took War For North Americans To Learn About Ukrainian Music
There has been little known in the West about Ukrainian composers until recently, especially in Canada and the U.S., according to experts. “North Americans...
Japan Is Conflicted About Resuming Tourism
Japan's opening up to mass tourism over the last decade brought an economic boost — a record 32 million tourists visited in 2019 and...
Why We Need To Cultivate Toleration
Toleration involves putting up with something that you would rather not be the case. This doesn’t have to involve moral disapproval: perhaps you just...
Bumping Up On The Limits Of Wellness Culture
Experimental psychology and data science would be used to develop clearer (and sometimes counterintuitive) recommendations for improving users’ lives. Bestselling books were written in...
UK Schools Delete Irish Writers In Bid To Diversify Curriculum
Irish writers have been dropped from the exam curriculum in British schools in favour of writers from more diverse backgrounds. Poets Seamus Heaney and...
How The Pyramid-Builders Lived
The portrait these documents convey is of resourceful workers who roamed from the country’s sacred core to some of its most remote precincts gathering...
How Social Media Platforms Decide Which Ideas Are Allowed
Platforms often claim that they are not in the business of creating the content that appears on their platforms, and that’s usually true. But it doesn’t...
The Remarkable Turnaround Of The Atlanta Symphony
The ASO has announced a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with its musicians, and its eighth consecutive year with a balanced budget. The orchestra...
The Peril Of Being Surrounded By Admirers
Admirers agree with you “even if you say something totally crazy.” And that’s bad: “You need people who can tell you what you don’t...
The “Insignificant” Details That Bring Historical Writing Alive
As a writer, the key is not so much assembling reams and reams of material, but finding the details that make a period or...
How Design Can Cause People Not To Use Public Space
In cities around the globe – from Algiers, Auckland and Chicago to Hanoi, Mexico City and Seoul – research shows that transforming public spaces markedly affects the diversity of what...