Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
This Time, We’re Really Anxious (A History)
Of course, anxiety never went away. Depression might have seemed ubiquitous, but people in the late 20th century hardly had less to be anxious about or more...
A New Model For Funding Art?
It pools 100 medium-sized donation of $1,000 each, with the total amount going to one not-for-profit project. Community projects apply and have their applications...
How Punk Rock Of The 70s And 80s Figured Out Safe Concerts
Venues for punk shows were numerous, encompassing everything from pet grooming stores to nonprofit community centers. The small-venue approach lent itself to the formation...
Theatre That Breaks Pre-Pandemic Rules
It's a musical experiment that questions the long-accepted rules of theatermaking and theatergoing, established and upheld before the pandemic. For example, a percentage of...
Hmnnn – UK Change Of Stance On Repatriation Of The Parthenon Marbles?
When Boris Johnson’s spokesperson was asked on Tuesday, he said: “I won’t pre-empt their meeting, obviously, but the possession of the marbles is a...
Harry Potter Cast To Reunite For 20th Anniversary TV Special
The release made no mention of Rowling when listing those participating in the retrospective. While Harry Potter remains a beloved franchise, Rowling sparked backlash from the trans community...
Of Course It Does: China Unveils New Five-Year-Plan For Film
The plan’s ultimate goal, however, is to build China into a “strong cultural power” by 2035 — one that can only be achieved, it...
Netflix Releases More Viewer Data, But…
Let’s be clear: Netflix’s bigger bucket of Top 10 lists, even if they’re independently verified, is ultimately self-serving — designed to promote its most...
Hong Kong’s Ambitious New M+ Opens, Built For A Different Time, Different Politics
The museum compares itself to Paris’s Centre Pompidou and New York’s Museum of Modern Art — but it has already moved to censor work as it...
The US Constitution: Is It Holding Back a Fairer Culture Or Holding Us Back?
Two new books reveal the widening gulf between those who see the Constitution’s age as a sign of its wisdom and those who see...
How The Week Shapes Our Perception Of Time
When you think it’s a Tuesday and it turns out to be Wednesday, you feel disoriented in a way that you don’t typically if...
How Marcella Hazan Became An Italian Food Guru
At the height of her career, she became so popular that Bloomingdale’s created a boutique in its storefront on Fifty-ninth Street called Marcella Hazan’s...
Oxford University’s Library Was A Mess. Then Sir Thomas Bodley Made An Extraordinary Offer
Over the course of fifteen years, until his death in 1613, Bodley would oversee the transformation of Oxford’s library from this empty shell to...
Big Thinkers Get Together To Debate “Information Disorder”
Mis- and disinformation are not the root causes of society’s ills but, rather, expose society’s failures to overcome systemic problems, such as income inequality, racism,...
Machine Learning Is Teaching Us How To See The World Differently
The opacity of machine learning systems raises serious concerns about their trustworthiness and their tendency towards bias. But the brute fact that they work could be...
Pushing And Shoving — Why Music Riles The Young
Why are generation after generation of young people drawn to these places where they’re pushed, jostled, pummeled or worse? Why do they run into...
Christie’s Ploughs Ahead With Controversial Pre-Columbian Sale, But a Third Fails To Sell
The house’s “Pre-Columbian Art & Taíno Masterworks” sale was preceded by an in-person protest, a slew of media articles, and a petition that circulated on change.org, signed by...
The Little Engine Trying To Chug Its Way Up The Hill: Literary Review Of...
Thirty years on, the LRC still feels like a very Canadian experiment, addressing the country’s challenges even as it faces them itself. - Toronto Star
A Climate Change Imperative For Artists
We have to find a new art and a new psychology to penetrate the apathy and the denial that are preventing us making the...
Work You’re Ashamed Of? (The Cultural Implications)
Whether or not a certain line of work is shameful or honorable is culturally relative, varying greatly. Farmers, soldiers, actors, dentists, prostitutes, pirates and...
Dance Is Huge On Insta And TikTok. Is It Also Harmful?
Users who look at videos and pictures of bodies deemed attractive by broader society will be shown more of those images, potentially feeling worse...
45,000-Year-Old Painting Of A Warty Pig Upends History Of Art
The famous animal paintings in the Chauvet cave, of France, are dated at around thirty-five thousand years old; the Sulawesi warty pig outdoes them by...
Five Books That Will Change The Way You Think About Climate Change
In contrast to the simplistic idea that all we need to do is implement a set of technological and lifestyle changes, they offer a...
The Trope Of “Hot” Women In Literature
A cursory review of Western literature and fiction suggests that the instinct to render fictional heroines “hot” has both a long history and one...
We Each Process Color Differently. Here’s How
Colour has a life beyond any individual perception. It exists as both the quality of a thing as well as an approach to that...