Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Maryland’s E-Book Public Library Law About To Be Overturned
First introduced in January 2021, the Maryland e-book law required any publisher offering to license "an electronic literary product" to consumers in the state...
The Computers Shaping Our Music
My contention is not that the quality of music decreased, but that the changing consumption method devalues each moment of recorded sound. The immense...
Is TikTok The Future Of Book Publishing?
Obscure backlist titles are being thrust into the spotlight, generating sales of hundreds of thousands of copies. Every chain bookstore now prominently displays BookTok...
Canadian Painter Christopher Pratt, 88
Pratt was often called one of Canada's greatest painters over the course of his extensive and successful career, which earned him appointment to both the Order...
The Queen In Popular Imagery
Possibly, the urge to set the Queen in humble domestic surroundings is linked to her frequent manifestation in the nation’s dream life. Like other...
Christo Before He Was Christo
“The moment you look at these early works you cannot help being fascinated they have such a strong physical presence. And the exhibits include...
Top Gun Reboot Breaks Box Office Records
Those returns rank among the top 10 highest-grossing second weekends in domestic box office history. They also push “Top Gun: Maverick” to $291 million...
It’s Her Biggest Hit: Mariah Carey Being Sued Over “All I Want For Christmas”
The 53-year-old US singer and her co-writer Walter Afanasieff are named in a lawsuit brought by the songwriter Andy Stone claiming that Carey and...
Assessing Osmo Vanska’s Impact On The Minnesota Orchestra
One of the reasons for Vänskä’s success in Minnesota has been that right from the start he gave the orchestra what it wanted: discipline...
How Geoff Dyer Fell In Love With The Blues
Listening to Kimbrough and Burnside I feel that, at last, in my early sixties, I’ve entered a corner of that foreign field, that vast...
Who Is Diagnosing Where We Are In History Right Now?
It is now more than half a century since the heyday of political modernism and the sociological project that accompanied it. Are we still,...
Those Magazines Of Conspicuous Consumption As The World’s Financial Insecurities Grow
“We engage wealth as a journalistic subject. Tom Wolfe called it ‘plutography.’ At the T&C offices, we call it our ‘crazy money’ stories. - New York Magazine
Fandom Fueled By Social Media Has Gotten Out Of Hand
Fans are increasingly demanding a return for the precious resource of their attention, their clicks and eyeballs and adulation. We may call celebrities influencers,...
The Internet Has Turned Us All Into Content Machines
“Clickbait” has long been the term for misleading, shallow online articles that exist only to sell ads. But on today’s Internet the term could...
American Theatre Still Lives in Joe Papp’s World
For among the many things this feisty, indomitable leader recognized was that New York City’s five boroughs were as under-served by the arts of...
What “MJ” The Musical Tells Us About What Dance Says About You
Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide...
Republic Of Georgia Fires Dozens Of Curators, Historians, Scientists
Up to 40 employees, including archaeologists, art historians, public relations officers, and scientists, were let go in May, according to the newly formed Georgian Trade...
Arts Organizations Back Away From Global Aspirations
Arts administrators are starting to try to measure things like mental and even physical wellbeing as a gauge of how successful their programs are,...
A Meditation On Originality And Plagiarism
Writers are indeed an incestuous little bunch eternally doomed to borrow, copy, steal, plagiarize, allude to, accidentally repeat, consciously imitate, alternately praise and denigrate...
The Shiny New Laguardia Airport: Haunted By The Old
Can any terminal relieve the misery and anxiety around flying these days? Let us peer into the future envisioned by the $8 billion reboot...
Why Won’t The Boomers Let Go?
Our model of social change is still rooted in midcentury clichés. Younger Americans imagine that starting a family and owning a home was much...
Composer Ingram Marshall, 80
He was sometimes called a post-minimalist, but he disliked the term, suggesting postmodernist as an alternative. But his music also embraced a time-expanding element...
Inside The American Modern Opera Company
“There was a very particular profile that we were looking for in the artists, which is people who are virtuosos in their area and...
People In Ukraine Are Struggling With The Place Of Russian Culture
On the streets and on social media, at family gatherings and at work, in interviews and in political journals, people across Ukraine are having...
Dahlia Lithwick: On Hopefulness In A Broken World
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not...