Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How To Fix Social Media (Lessons From History)
The arrival of broadcast media at the start of the last century set off an information revolution just as tumultuous as the one we...
Are You Ready For Our Real-Life Dystopia?
When you zoom out, it’s easy to see that American society is approaching a modern-day dystopia as the once sci-fi-worthy stories of environmental destruction,...
Facebook Employees Had Plenty Of Ideas How To Fix Facebook. But…
It’s almost cliché at this point to accuse Facebook of ignoring the impact its products have on users and society. The observation hits a...
Why Did Believer Magazine Shut Down?
It’s a popular idea, these days, that all it takes is a kindly benefactor to set things right. Unfortunately, it is and will always...
How The Internet Changed Photography For The Masses (And A Nostalgia For The Past)
Curiously keen to recapture the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-on-there waiting period that analog film required, young digital types have taken up the popular Dispo camera app, which...
Glasgow School Of The Art, Ravaged By Fire, Decides To Rebuild Original Building
The school said it had looked closely at a wide range of alternatives, including a ‘do minimum’ approach, a new build on the site...
Arts Organizations Coping With A Changed Labor Market
As some arts organizations retool and expand their hiring, they’re finding that the upheavals of 2020 — the dislocation of the pandemic and a...
Some Independent Movie Theatres Have Been Doing Great During COVID
For a certain sector of the exhibition business, things look, if not blazingly bright, at least cautiously bullish. While not immune to the forces...
Canadian Theatre Icon Martha Henry, 83
Only 12 days before her death, Henry gave her last performance as the character “A” — an older, dying woman — in Stratford’s production...
We’re Not Supposed To Call It The Brexit Festival, But Here You Have It…
Unboxed: Creativity in the UK – formerly known as Festival 2022 and derided by some as a “festival of Brexit” – draws on arts,...
The Insidious Harm Of “Inspiration Porn”
I've "come to see Keller’s mainstream image and story as a textbook example of “inspiration porn,” where disabled people’s lives are flattened into saccharine...
The Social Media Problem: We’re Talking Too Much
A lot is wrong with the internet, but much of it boils down to this one problem: We are all constantly talking to one...
Can You Really Be A Better Person Taking Masterclasses Online?
Mark Williamson, the company’s chief operating officer, told me, “I think it’s legitimately possible for us to create an algorithm that builds a personalized...
Giant Puppet Finishes Four-Month Refugee Walk From Syria To UK
Little Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was created by Handspring, the company that made the equine puppets in War Horse. She stands 3.5...
The Unprecedented Logistics Behind Getting Broadway Up And Working Again
Broadway shows stopped dead in their tracks in March 2020. The production teams simply had to hurriedly depart their stages with scenery still in...
Seriously? Send Your Art To Space?
Uplift promotes ‘Constellation Vault’: ‘a platform for commercial promotion and exhibition in low Earth orbit’. ‘The Constellation Vault will offer patrons the exclusive opportunity...
Robot Artists Detained By Egyptian Authorities Over Security Concerns
A robot artist made it to an exhibit at Egypt’s pyramids after its British maker said airport security held his creation for 10 days...
Chicago Art Institute Fired Its Docents. But The Story Isn’t So Simple
James Rondeau, the Institute’s director, said that the docents program had long been viewed as logistically unsustainable, and that the Institute had stopped adding...
How The Big Resignation Is Remaking America
This is a moment of fascinating decentralization. The U.S. economy lost its mojo. We had less quitting, less moving, and less entrepreneurship than in...
The New York Times Long History (And Ambitions) For Books
It all started in the very first issue of The New York Daily Times on Sept. 18, 1851. In an article on Page 2...
Exploring: The Culture Of Music Genres
“It’s not untrue that these genres are a kind of record company plot to sell us music but there’s a reason why this conspiracy...
Vinyl Records Are Popular — Too Popular To Keep Up
Left for dead with the advent of CDs in the 1980s, vinyl records are now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format,...
Reconsidering The History Of Humanity
Humanity was not restricted to small bands of hunter-gatherers, agriculture did not lead inexorably to hierarchies and conflicts and there was not one mode...
A New Shakespeare-Style Theatre In The UK North
Shakespeare North Playhouse is on course to open next summer, joining only a handful of historically accurate, wooden-framed theatre auditoriums in England. - The Stage
25 TV Shows That Are Defining/Reflecting The 21st Century
These are the series that are both influential and significant, that have broken new ground, that have reflected life specifically in this century, or...