Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Growing Trend: Young Architects Want To Unionize
It's a trend at professions offering noneconomic benefits, a sense of mission at a nonprofit or the cachet of working in book publishing or...
Why London Dance Companies Can’t Do A Good “Nutcracker”
London’s big ballet companies are not where anyone should hope to find an even tolerable Nutcracker. - Alastair Macaulay
My Life As A Cyborg
My elevator pitch goes something like this: “I know you think cyborgs are always imminent. But not here yet. However, I am a cyborg....
Christopher Newton, 85, Former Shaw Festival Director
Among Newton’s contributions were the development of distinctive festival seasons, the establishment of a permanent acting ensemble and the creation of an artistic training...
Confessions Of A Crossword Puzzle Constructor
What makes for a good word, in the eyes of a crossword-puzzle constructor? The language of aesthetic judgment is gustatory—one has good taste or...
How Do You Reconcile Being A Writer With Having A Career?
There is a contradiction here of both scorning a system that’s shallow and rigged, and also feeling bitter about not being able to succeed...
How Can You Recontextualize Confederate Statues? (There Are Challenges)
Hamza Walker conceived a fiendish idea: Why not stage an exhibition in which, removed from their places of pride, these statues could be evaluated...
A Case For The Universality Of Western Music
Jay Nordlinger: "What is the glory of Western civilization? Our political freedom, probably — the rights of individual man. But I would not put...
Biden Nominates Net Neutrality Champions To FCC
Biden is blazing a path that will make it harder for large internet service providers to exert their market control. The point of net...
New AI Software That Could Make Editing Podcasts As Easy As Editing Text
Shasta can record a conversation, automatically transcribe its contents in the cloud, and then make that audio every bit as easy to edit as...
A Very Very Weird Year For The Art Market
The story of the Banksy neatly encompasses all three elements of the year: the impact of Asian buying power; the increasing influence of cryptos and those...
The Guggenheim Preached Austerity During COVID, Then Gave Its Director A Forty Percent Raise
The Guggenheim’s 990 IRS Filings, a form the US Federal government uses to gather information about tax-exempt organisations, shows Armstrong’s total compensation increased from...
How Looney Tunes Got A Foothold In American Culture
Why did several generations watch old Looney Tunes alongside new work and actually prefer the stuff made before they were born? It was partly a historical...
What’s The Point Of Coming In To An Office?
The offices of tomorrow may have more in common with a café or a classroom or a maker space, IDEO's Sandy Speicher says. It’s...
The Art Of Museum Store Shopping
You must resist the siren call of logoed knickknacks. These items transmit either “I was there” (which, as the gift giver, you are already...
Culture Shift: Gen Z Kids Are Abandoning Real-World Sports For E-Games
It’s clear that the rise of e-sports has come at the expense of traditional youth sports, with implications for their future and for the...
Do Great Books Courses Make Us Better?
John McWhorter: "To simply know that the kinds of questions Rousseau stimulates are, indeed, questions makes you a better person in the sheer sense...
Revealed: Boris Johnson Argued Passionately For Return Of Parthenon Marbles In 1986
“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape...
“Best Theatre of 2021” Makes No Sense – But There’s Plenty To Be Grateful...
No one could pretend that we’re back to normal yet. There likely is no going back — and after a year of overdue cultural...
Seven Theatre Trends For 2022
Journalist Jonathan Mandell looks at the trends from the past year and sees progress and stagnation. - New York Theatre
Why The Music Catalog Market Is Setting New Records
New investors, including private equity firms, have poured billions of dollars into the market, viewing music royalties as a kind of safe commodity —...
America Out Of Ideas? No – But Our Market For Ideas Is Broken
Two weeks ago, I wrote that the U.S. needed a revitalized culture of experimentation. Now I think that what we really need is more...
How Twitter Distorts Intimacy (And Context)
The frequency of context-destruction is no accident. Twitter rewards high-context speech, and then gives us the perfect tool to decontextualize that speech. Twitter is...
Apple Streaming Has Been Crap For Classical Music. So It Bought An Expert
With a view to improving that experience, presumably, Apple acquired dedicated classical music streaming service Primephonic in August 2021. In a press release, the company...
The Further Adventures In Testing Whether Hybrid Performances Of Theatre Draw Audiences
"The show sold a bit below their historical average—which the company anticipated, not least because of the rising concern around yet another COVID variant—but...
