Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
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...
Report: Harvard University Holds Remains Of Enslaved People and Thousands Of Native Americans
Harvard University holds the human remains of at least 19 individuals who were likely enslaved and almost 7,000 Native Americans — collections that represent...
Study Of Thousands Of Newspapers: Stories About Humanities Reported Differently Than Stories About Humanities
When we examined articles about the humanities more closely and compared them to articles about science, we were surprised to find that humanities scholarship,...
What The Hollywood Bowl Means To LA
The Hollywood Bowl represents L.A. in all its naked splendor, idealism, commercialism, diversity, communal aspirations toward equality, social division, tackiness and even sordidness. It...
Is Social Media Really Making Us Worse?
There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms...
Manhattan Versus Brooklyn: The New Battle For American Culture
New York City’s intellectual landscape is increasingly split between two warring scenes, divided by geography, aesthetics and politics. Which of these prevails could affect...
Is Netflix Pivoting To Studio Dinosaur Status?
For much of its existence, Netflix has thought of itself as a tech company, moving fast and breaking things; now it’s seeking to emulate...
Canada’s Dearth Of Opera
We in Canada are operatically underserved. Our so-called second largest company offers its patrons the grand total of three mainstage productions annually and this...
The Man Who Spent 60 Years Building His Own Cathedral
The cathedral’s crypt would be his burial place. And he’d be buried there because it was his cathedral. He’d designed it entirely in his head, without...
Deconstructivist Legacy In Architecture: Constant Revolution
The idea that a building was a means to solve problems and serve clients, to which postmodernism only added the idea that the results...
Hollywood Makes Progressive Movies? The Data Say Otherwise
I’ll stipulate that the people who make movies may skew progressive in their beliefs, commitments and voting patterns. The movies themselves tell another story....
Not Quite Music, But Sorta? (In An AI Kind Of Way)
James Blake’s new album, “Wind Down,” is created in collaboration with the A.I.-powered app Endel, which collects data on individual users from devices like...
Why People Love Sending Gifts To The Queen
For the last year, we have conducted interviews with people who have given at least one gift to a member of the royal family...
Everyone Is Hating On The State Of Book Reviews. But What Are They Even...
If, in fact, book reviews are on the whole too positive, as some suggest, does this mean that the purpose of book reviewing is...
UK Police Censor Violent Rap Music. Should They?
Even a hardened civil liberties advocate would have to down a stiff drink and say a prayer or two before defending someone’s right to...
Behold The Modern Literary Festival — What An Uncreative Place!
The growth of British literary festivals over the past few decades has been an exponential development. It has also changed the idea of what...
Orchestra League President: There Are Three Issues Going Forward
Simon Woods: "I keep coming back to three defining issues that I believe will fuel our artistic creativity and our financial success." - Medium
What Corrupts The Visual Art World
Institutional bureaucrats, not billionaires, have the power to constrain the possibilities for aesthetic development in the present. The figure of the contemporary artist we...
A Children’s Mental Health Crisis: One Thing We Could Do
We are well past the point of believing that casual or inferred approaches meet the need. With summer programs right around the corner, there...
A New Theatre Festival That Doesn’t Look Like Anything Else
“When communities are allowed to craft their own narrative, that narrative is more complex. We are not imposing on or colonizing them with a...
