Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Game Creators Are Thinking About Their Craft Right Now
Each year a number of key trends stand out. For 2023 it was applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for game development, with the future shape...
Louis Menand: Grappling With The Root Of Creativity
Do you study creativity by analyzing people commonly acknowledged to be creative and figure out what they all have in common? Or could someone...
I Am In A Relationship With The Internet
Barely more than a decade later, the internet is not the tool. I am the tool. Somehow, I have been instrumentalized by the internet,...
How We Might Look At Vermeer
One reason we keep missing the mark is that Vermeer’s era straddled two quite different ideas of what painting might be—the old one of religious...
A Growing Movement To Change The American Kids Learn To Read
The movement, under the banner of “the science of reading,” is targeting the education establishment: school districts, literacy gurus, publishers and colleges of education,...
A Literary Magazine Dies — What That Says About Our Culture
The American magazine is in a state of decay. Now known mostly as brands, once sumptuous print publications exist primarily as websites or YouTube...
An Existential Question About Journalism
Who picks up the tab of paying for journalism when the audience won’t, and how does that change the truths that we journalists want...
Why Aren’t Canadian Movie Box Office Numbers Reported?
The website Box Office Mojo lists data on the top grossing films in more than 70 countries, but not Canada. Why are there no...
After A Year, Spotify Kills Its Wordle-Inspired Music Game
First appearing in February 2022 amid a surge of games that used the format of Wordle, which the New York Times bought in January of...
After A Century, Has Music As A Business Died?
We are a long way from understanding the ramifications of having it all available at the click of a button. Still, music will survive....
How Do We Separate The Artist From The Transgressions?
How do we weigh an artist’s accomplishment against his personal wickedness? “Do we believe genius gets special dispensation, a behavioral hall pass?” Should we...
“Phantom” Closes On Broadway After 13,981 Performances
"I got the gig of a lifetime. There's no other way to describe it," says Richard Poole, who's been a member of the ensemble,...
Big New Museum Built Underneath A Dutch Palace
The extension, designed by Kaan Architecten and finished with decorative walnut and Blanco Macael white stone, echoes the symmetry and style of the Dutch...
Australian Music Is Facing An “Existential Threat”
Traditional channels such as radio and gigging still matter, but the explosive growth of TikTok in particular has given it a disproportionate power over...
British Government Denies Visas For Ukrainian Orchestra Members
“They made a big deal out of supporting the Ukrainians but when it came to giving them visas to play in the UK, they...
Has The Metaverse Been Put On Hold?
A challenging macroeconomic environment discourages both consumers and tech giants from investing heavily in metaverse technologies that lack a solid history of performance and...
Hollywood Retreats To The Basics: Making Money
As entertainment’s largest conglomerates face a perfect storm of financial pressures and macroeconomic uncertainty, there’s been a clear shift again to embrace the fundamentals...
Audience Behavior Is Definitely Getting Worse
“There’s a lack of respect for other people in line-ups, they push through, don’t respect ticket takers. Some of them don’t even realize you...
Streaming Made The Arts Accessible For Many. But Streaming Is Declining Post-COVID
With live performance now back, and some theaters and concert halls still struggling to bring back audiences, presenters have cut back on their streamed...
What Happened To The Marketplace Of Ideas?
“A lot of us wanted to believe that we had free and open discussions in this country, and that we can talk about anything,...
Study: A Relationship Between Music And Mental Health Problems?
We couldn’t ignore that there were more mental health problems among people who play musical instruments and among people who reach higher levels of...
Are We Searching For Arts Leaders In The Right Way?
What if theatres, instead of expecting new leaders to fix everything, helped surface change opportunities for the next leader within the search process itself?...
Remembering Mary Quant, Designer Who Made The 60s Swing
Synonymous with defining styles of the era, including the miniskirt and hot pants, her colorful and unashamedly sexy clothes for a drastically changing world...
FBI’s New Stolen Art App Needs Work
The app features 4,522 stolen objects which are searchable by subject matter, medium, or artist. Many of the works are not photographed, and a...
An Infestation Of Information-Based Art
Although the elements vary, the genre is characterized by a reliance on text and discourse to support an abundance of materials, distributed spatially. - ArtForum
