Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How Much Energy Does Our Body Expend In Thinking?
New research builds on a growing understanding that the majority of the brain’s function goes to maintenance. While many neuroscientists have historically focused on...
Good Taste Will Be Even More Important In The Age Of AI
Taste is a subtle sensibility, more often a secret weapon than a person’s defining characteristic. But we’re entering a time when its importance has...
At BET Awards, Stars Call Out Trump Administration
Doechii, the Grammy-winning rapper, and entertainment mogul Tyler Perry made overt statements about the current administration and its multi-pronged attacks on communities of color....
UC Irvine In Negotiations To Run Orange County Museum Of Art
“The university would run the museum. The details are being worked out. Negotiations are ongoing and a finished agreement is months away with the...
Smithsonian Will Conduct Content Review Of Collections after Trump Request
“The board directed the secretary to assess content in museums and make needed changes to ensure unbiased content, including personnel changes,” a Smithsonian spokesman...
How I Rediscovered The Joys Of Reading In BookTok
To read for joy, for wonder, for emotional truth is to hold onto something deeply human. And in a moment when the stories we’re...
Trump DOJ Says President Can Abolish National Monument Protections
The May 27 document, which reverses a legal opinion issued in 1938, could be laying the groundwork for Trump to abolish or dramatically shrink...
Actors Unions Make Deal with Video Game Producers After Strike Over AI
With the strike, the union took a stand against proposed AI terms that leaders claimed would have allowed companies to undercut members and their...
William Kentridge On Creating Art
You’ve probably had the experience where you’ve written something, it feels really great and, the next morning, you read it and think, “Who wrote...
What Monet Understood About Evoking A Place
This immersiveness does not come from an illusion of being in three dimensions – the opposite, in fact. Monet does a few subtle things...
The Truth About Finding Your Own Creativity
The myth of the genius is that these individuals woke up one morning and excelled. As a result, too many people are convinced that either you’re creative...
The Really Good News Out Of This Year’s Tonys
On Sunday, the Tony Awards paid homage to the astonishing array of acting talent that drew audiences back to the theater. But it wasn’t star power...
The Great Unwinding: Warner Discovery Will Break Up
The decision to split is a major about-face from the conventional wisdom in the industry when Warner Bros. Discovery was created three years ago...
Smithsonian Pushes Back Against Trump Over Attempt To Fire Portrait Gallery Director
The statement, which does not mention Trump, Sajet or the NPG, goes on to obliquely rebuke the president’s claims, clarifying that he does not have...
How Irving Thalberg Helped Create Hollywood’s Golden Age
Thalberg produced some three or four hundred movies in his years at M-G-M, ranging from big pictures like “Mutiny on the Bounty” to the...
As AI Writing Becomes More Ubiquitous, Will We Change How Humans Write?
Will we now push ourselves to write in a style that means we can’t possibly be confused for AI? Might we try to sound...
Is Poetry Just About The Words? (Not Really)
While what’s lost in translation is admittedly enormous, to conclude that poetry is therefore untranslatable is to fundamentally misrepresent both what poetry is and...
Rural America Will Be The Loser If Congress Defunds Public Broadcasting
“This would disproportionately harm rural areas and smaller communities, where public media really is a lifeline,” said Tim Richardson of PEN America. - The...
Judge Rules Trump Can Dismantle Institute of Museum and Library Services
In Friday’s ruling, the judge wrote that as much as the “Court laments the Executive Branch’s efforts to cut off this lifeline for libraries...
Now That Taylor Swift Owns Her Music, What Happens To Her Re-Recordings?
Some fans are disappointed that we may never see the last two rerecordings, though Swift has hinted that she might be willing to release...
Tracing Back Where All Our Languages Came From
There are about 7,000 languages spoken in the world today; they can be divided into about 140 families. Nevertheless, the languages most of us...
What To Make Of Damien Hirst At 60?
Ever since Hirst burst on the art scene in the 1990s with his macabre readymades (or “objets trouvé”) of dead animals in vitrines, he...
In The Era Of Algorithms, Roots Music Is Getting A Boost
Algorithms, which sort the listening public into ever-more-individualized niches, can cut both ways: They can introduce you to new artists, but they can also...
Trump Takes Over Arts Institutions. But Can He?
Trump may not have the formal capacity to shape the leadership of any of the Smithsonian’s museums, but if others treat him as if...
Why Are There So Many TV Shows Now About Rich People?
Lately, most of television seems stuck in the same mode. Virtually everything I’ve watched recently has been some variation of rich people pottering around...
