Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Ode To The Intimate Pleasures Of The Harpsichord
The piano is the instrument of expressive individualism; the harpsichord is the instrument of a vibrant, discursive life of the mind. It is the...
Grappling With The Enormity Of Losing Sondheim
Sondheim deserves a spot on playwriting’s Mt. Rushmore, for his contribution to the theater is as significant from a literary as it is from a...
Team Finds Ancient Iliad Mosaic 100 Miles North Of London
A decade on from uncovering the remains of King Richard III under a car park, the university’s archaeological team have unearthed a Roman mosaic...
Hollywood Celebs Are Starting Their Own Creative High Schools
With so many projects in production, “there’s an enormous amount of jobs in editing, in visual effects, in makeup and hair, that we can,...
The Man Trying To Fix DC’s Broken Arts Commission
It is one of the country’s leaders in funding — its $38 million is one of the nation’s largest per capita — but it...
An Artificial Reality Of Self-Improvement?
If computers gave each and every one of us a better way to gauge where to put our resources and energy and everyone of...
“Superstar” Actor Arrested In Connection With Jan. 6 Riot
James Beeks, who performs in Superstar under the stage name James T. Justis, is charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia with obstruction...
US Libraries See Surge In Demands To Ban Books
“Social media is amplifying local challenges and they’re going viral, but we’ve also been observing a number of organisations activating local members to go...
Filter Me This, Batman: Yassify Takes On Famous Images
To “yassify” something is to apply several beauty filters to a picture using FaceApp, an A.I. photo-editing application, until its subject — be that...
A Surge In Ballroom Dance In South America. But…
Latin America’s ballroom scene is relatively new. It started in 2013 when a group of dancers began hosting vogue battles in Brazil, and has...
Rethink: Why Shouldn’t Shelter For Homeless People Be Beautiful?
“Design was often not seen as an important aspect of homeless housing. They were faceless vanilla blocks that looked cheap and made people, by...
Is The Working Class Shut Out Of Today’s Art?
It’s not possible to live authentically as a member of the working class without self-annihilating or folding oneself into the straitjacket of the middle...
Diversifying Your Emotional States
The more finely you can identify different body states—distinguishing, say, among aggravation, irritation, frustration, hostility, anxiety, and disgruntlement—the more you will understand yourself, and...
These Days You Can Bet On Almost Anything. But Why?
The most straightforward reason for the surge in gambling is a change to the law: In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional...
How Music For The Movies Is Evolving
Film music may be a genre, but all that means is music used in a film. Other than that, anything the director will let...
With Big Ceremony, Egypt Reopens Ancient Avenue Of The Sphinxes
The road, also known as Road of the Rams, dates back 3,400 years, Reuters reports. However, it was first discovered in the late 1940s,...
Magnus Carlsen Has Been World Chess Champion Since His Teens. The World Of Chess...
Computer-assisted preparation makes it ‘harder and harder’ to demonstrate the superiority of his intuition and strategic thinking in classical games. Players with good memories,...
Shortened Comic-Con Returns, But Many Dealers Won’t Attend
No matter the time of year, the energy of Comic-Con thrives in Southern California’s comic book stores — spaces deeply entwined within its culture....
Labor Unrest Grows: Near-IATSE Strike Is Sign Of Things To Come
Union members have grown impatient with worsening working conditions and IATSE’s long tradition of avoiding nationwide walkouts. IATSE members in October overwhelmingly supported a strike...
End Of Times – Identifying The Anthropocene
In the face of such debilitating immensity, we cannot merely shrug and take a selfie. We cannot allow the scale of the crises we...
The Spanglification Of Languages
It is becoming clear that the mixed nature of Spanglish represents a general phenomenon. Among people born in and growing up in neighborhoods like...
Our Ancient Attraction To Glass
In a world filled with the buff, brown and sand hues of more utilitarian Late Bronze Age materials, glass — saturated with blue, purple,...
Nope: Tolkien Estate Blocks Crypto Coin “JRR Token”
The developer said in response that JRR Token was intended to reference “a unique form of digital currency”, rather than the late fantasy author,...
Kafkaesque US Visa System Wreaking Havoc With The Arts
The amount of paperwork required by the USCIS (United States Citizen and Immigration Service), says Nicki Harper, Los Angeles Opera’s director of artistic operations, plus all...
ABT Taps Beyonce Entertainment Exec As Its Next Executive Director
Janet Rollé, general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company, will in January assume the role of chief executive and executive director...