Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Chicago’s Victory Gardens In Turmoil As Artistic Director Out
Three resident theater companies that present work at Victory Gardens have pledged not to work there until the artists’ complaints are addressed. - The New...
The People Who Probe For Meaning In Abandoned Theme Parks
As it turns out, there's an entire community of people captivated with defunct, abandoned or retired theme parks and attractions around the world. - NPR
Why Music Evokes Memories
The connection is one of the reasons why music — especially old music — is so meaningful to people. It's also why music became such...
Adapting To The Medium: Acting In Video Games
Games are kind of ragtag, and there’s not really a standard. For actors, there’s never been a guide what to expect, from auditions to...
The Art Of Pretending To Have Read Books
Now, as a life-long pseud, I learned years ago how to float in an implied familiarity with an author or their work, without telling...
The Death Of London’s Great Orchestra Festival
The death sentence was delivered by the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, in a statement terminating BBC Four, which televises most of the Proms,...
In A World Where Nothing Is Forgotten, The Past Looks Different
Human experience is now recorded on something that looks a bit like an informal version of the blockchain – the distributed public ledger whose...
When Stories Of Sad White Men Were Groundbreaking
Could it be that the stories of the average middle-class white man — the ones we grew up on — were once a novelty?...
Triumphant Debut For New Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra At London Proms
It was an impressive start for an ensemble that didn’t exist a fortnight ago, rapidly assembled from professional Ukrainian musicians in Ukraine and across Europe. - The...
Beginning Of A New Era For Music? Chart-Eligible NFT Song Released In UK
Unlike with many NFTs, buyers will not require a crypto wallet. After the purchase is made on Serenade’s website, a digital wallet is created...
Why Does Beyonce Have So Many Songwriting Credits On Her New Album?
Beyoncé’s collaboration with other artists has a lot more to do with intellectual property law and the fairly modern practice of sampling (reusing part of an...
Seamus Heaney On How To Use Dictionaries
"I don’t begin with the idea of plundering the word for meanings; it’s rather a discovery, a saving grace, something that clinches or copes....
What Happened To Mall Culture?
What killed them wasn’t just online shopping or big box stores, but a broader cultural shift. Malls succeeded by catering to different groups, from...
Singapore’s Art Market Rises As Hong Kong Recedes
The tide seems to be turning in the city’s favor, in part, due to a general migration across the region to Singapore because of...
America’s Ten Most Influential Buildings
Dezeen asked 10 American architects, including American Institute of Architects (AIA) president-elect Kimberly Dowdell and veteran New York architect Robert AM Stern, to name the US building...
That Seems… So Normal. But Who Defines Normal?
How does such a tiny group dominate what we think of as normality? With meticulous research, Sarah Chaney traces the history of such narratives...
How To Sort Out Cultural Appropriation From Appreciation
The type of cultural appropriation we need to be vigilant about is fairly simple. It occurs when members of a dominant culture – for...
The End of Social Media As We Know It
“Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of...
Has Our Thinking Become Binary Like Our Machines?
The machine world is a binary world, and it strikes me that we have learned to apply those zeroes and ones to our thinking,...
Marvel Comics Have Become Penguin Classics
Last month, the “leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world” released, in collaboration with Marvel, three volumes from what's being called the “Penguin...
What A Recent Scandal Reveals About Academic Research
Most suspect work is left to fester in the literature. When corrections do appear, they may be slow to be acknowledged; even retracted papers can...
Do We Have To Be Ruled By Algorithms?
Resisting the rule of the algorithm takes energy and creativity and courage, and the risk for our culture is that our technological skill and...
Crazy? Saudi Arabia Plans 100-Mile-Long Mirrored Mega-City Clad In Mirrors
According to the Saudis, artificial intelligence will be central to how people live in the 500-metre-high, 200-metre-wide structure, a car-free, carbon neutral bubble that...
A Worldwide Movement To Make Public Transit Free
Public transport should be considered a human right, alongside access to health and education. It’s necessary to life in a city. “Public transport is an...
What To Make Of The Denver Art Museum’s Makeover
The Denver Art Museum’s Ponti-designed fortress is by no means a perfect building — or even a great building. It has variously been described...
