Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Why Thomas Dausgaard Abruptly Quit The Seattle Symphony?
Dausgaard, 58, had seemed a good fit for his position, which he had held just since fall 2019. But he was separated from the...
A History Of Tackiness
Tackiness, it would seem, has always been in the eye of the beholder—a disapproving audience, real or imagined, clicking their proverbial tongues. They usually...
Slippery Slope? Artists Are Boycotting This Year’s Sydney Festival Over Its Funders
If an arts organisation accepts money from a donor, there is always a price to pay. It’s a question of how high the price...
How A Major Gift Turned Into A Shiny New Gallery For Indigenous Art In...
Against the promise of his holdings of Aboriginal art, Gantner urged Shepparton to build a standalone gallery and for it to become a not-for-profit...
Australian Arts Facing Labor Shortages
There is growing evidence of worker shortages for live shows. It’s clear there is a gap left by workers who left the arts during 2020/2021 lockdowns, resulting in a reduced pool of staff to call on when...
Of Norman Mailer And Cancel Culture
A culturally and politically monotone graduate class, on board with just about every woke nostrum going, not only dominates publishing houses’ workforce – it...
Why I Quit Being A Classical Musician
"I’ve been working to know myself apart from my identity as a musician, which I always held in higher regard than my inherent worth...
Are NFTs Facilitating Theft Of Artists’ Work?
As the NFT art market takes off, systems to ensure a buyer is making a legitimate purchase of digital ownership have failed to keep...
American Shakespeare Center Names A New Director
Brandon Carter, a resident actor with ASC since 2018, assumes the directorship in a new management structure that the company describes as “a coequal...
It’s Hollywood Awards Season. But It’s Awfully Quiet…
The AFI Awards were postponed. The Critics’ Choice Awards — scheduled to be televised Sunday night in hopes of filling the void left by...
Fascinating: Have We Got So Much Data That We’re Entering Into A Post-Hypothesis Era...
The complexity that this wealth of data has revealed to us cannot be captured by theory as traditionally understood. “We have leapfrogged over our...
This Year’s Golden Globes Event Was an Embarrassing Mess
Given the award show’s banishment from longtime home NBC and its failure to secure a new broadcaster, this year’s Globes were tweeted out from...
How AI Is Replacing Millions Of Jobs
While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI...
Thriller: How A Famous Music School Was Airlifted Out Of Afghanistan
“It became clear, just in a matter of days, that the only way to salvage the school was to actually do a mass evacuation...
How Traditional Architecture Has Become A Right-Wing Culture Wars Battleground
This time around, the traditionalist lunatics have succeeded in taking over the asylum. Reactionary ideas hostile to the cosmopolitan, to Modernism, to modernity itself,...
The Game’s Afoot: Why Did Conan-Doyle Sign A Pirate Version Of His Holmes Novel
Why did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sign a pirate edition of “The Sign of the Four,” the second of the four Sherlock Holmes novels?...
We Hardly Knew Ya: Dausgaard Abruptly Quits Seattle Symphony
Seattle Symphony music director Thomas Dausgaard has abruptly stepped down from his post, midway through his third season at the top of Seattle’s flagship...
How Do You Change Dance’s Culture Of Injury?
From a very early age, dancers are taught that pain comes with the territory. “Dance is not natural. We’re stretching our bodies to extremes.”...
Understanding The Role Of Emotions
Being in the throes of an emotion influences a great many things: your memory, what you see, the inferences you draw about the world,...
For A Long Time The Purpose Of Art Was To Shock Against Norms. But...
Somewhere in the 19th century the notion develops that a work of art can be most effective when it’s ugly, when it deeply mirrors certain social realities...
Want To Be A Successful Artist? Find A Rival
A study of composers during from 1750-1899 discovered that they were significantly more productive when they lived in close proximity to other composers. The most...
The “Change” Binary Of Music
The urge to be static rose concurrently with the urge to change. And so, in the twenty-first century, we’re presented with a choice: to...
Music Critic Richard Freed, 93
Mr. Freed was active for six decades, contributing regularly to The Washington Post, the New York Times and the old Washington Star, among many other publications. He...
IMAX: Time To Rethink What Movies Are
For the right kind of movie, people really want a cultural, theatrical experience. Period. And they want to see the right kind of movie...
Anger As Motivating Force
As almost anyone can confirm, manifest anger is by its nature felt and received with an intense immediacy, bringing to life the bodily and...
