Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Spielberg Tricked Me Into Writing The “West Side Story” Screenplay
I love “West Side Story,” I always wanted to work with Stephen Sondheim, and I’ve come to realize that my writerly self-respect is tangled up...
Tubing Streaming Stars Are Burning Out
Twitch is now being criticised for encouraging streamers to spend an unhealthy amount of time on the platform and then not doing enough to...
How To Think About Being Online
The key to cutting through the confusion is to see that digital transformation is not a single thing, but a multi-faceted journey with differing...
Berlin Considers Plan To Ban Cars From City Center
Campaign group Berlin Autofrei has proposed a law to limit private car use within the Ringbahn train line in the German capital, an area of 34...
A Return To Western Liberalism?… That’s Problematic
When some commentators call for a return to classical liberalism, they forget that it rested on the moral foundations of Jewish and Christian monotheism...
Just How Does The Dallas Museum Of Art Expect To Pay For A Major...
The involvement of wealthy donors sets up a balancing act for the DMA at a time when patrons’ money is under more scrutiny perhaps...
How Do You Know You’re Not Living In A Simulation? (No, Really…)
Can you prove you’re not in a simulation? You might think you have definitive evidence that you’re not. I think that’s impossible, because any...
Just So You Know: This Is What Streaming Platforms Pay Artists Per Stream
I think we can all agree that this system is not set up for independent artists with a growing fanbase. The benefits of this pay-out scale are designed...
Data: Who Gets To Be A Resident Choreographer
The position of resident choreographer, while it does not exist at every company and varies between organizations, represents job stability, resources, and artistic opportunity...
The Essential Opera Quality
Opera demands engagement. It’s best if it accomplishes this by being creatively provocative or ravishing or infuriating, but as long as there's enough to...
Why Art Ought To Be A Daily Habit
Arthur Brooks: Engaging with art after worrying over the minutiae of your routine is like looking at the horizon after you’ve spent too long...
Did Marshall McLuhan Lead Us To Fake News?
McLuhan's doctrine was attractive to the Boomers because it explained that everything the older generation knew, or thought they knew, was an illusion. Everything...
You Think AI Ought To Make Moral Judgments For Us? (Psst! It’s Already Happening)
Recently, some scientists taught an artificial intelligence software, called Delphi (after the ancient Greek religious sanctuary), to make moral pronouncements. Type any action into it, even...
Oops: Nielsen Admits It Undercounted Viewership And Cost Ad Dollars
Between April and the end of the 2021, the VAB says, Nielsen did not count “one and a half billion impressions” in 20 top...
Why Is It Taking So Long To Develop More Female Conductors?
“If you don’t have role models, it’s much harder to see yourself as a conductor – and there were male musicians who wouldn’t see...
Kennicott: Why It’s Difficult To Know What To Make Of The Academy Movie Museum
The Academy Museum, like the Newseum before it, does an imperfect job of balancing two basic identities and purposes, one essentially self-promotional, the other...
How Alternative Art Spaces Changed LA
Despite the chorus of mainstream voices that had written off Los Angeles as essentially devoid of noteworthy cultural activity, the 1970s gave rise to...
The Taylor Swift Debacle — Why Questioning Her Authorship Is A Dumb Idea
Calling out fellow songwriters for not writing their own material is bad form for musicians, particularly so given that the definition of songwriting has...
Does Passing Down Ballet Tradition Hinder Advancement Of The Art Form?
“We’ve been told forever that what you receive from your teachers, you are then passing on to your students. And I think in that...
Data Scientists Set About Completing Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. In The Process…
"I have spent the past two years immersed in writing a book about the man and his music. Beethoven’s most appealing feature is his...
Washington State School District Takes Aim At “To Kill A Mockingbird”
The teachers’ objections to the book included criticism that Black characters are not fully realized and that the book romanticizes the idea of a...
Dance School Retools Around Wellness, Mental Health
Students are taught mindfulness, yoga, talking therapy - and coping techniques, such as breathwork. "The aim is to counterbalance everything else they do, not...
Broadway Shrank Last Week
Broadway continued its winter freeze last week, with box office dropping 11% to a slim $16,494,289 for its meager 21-show roster. Attendance for the...
Charlie Brown’s Voice Is Dead
Born in Los Angeles on Aug. 10, 1956, Peter Robbins got his start as a child performer and, beginning at age 9, brought to...
Can “Anarchist Architecture” Make Us More Resilient?
"Architecture and anarchy may not seem like the most obvious pairing. But since anarchism emerged as a distinct kind of politics in the second half of...