Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Does Life Have A Purpose?
There is no controversy in saying that a single organism wants to remain alive. Even bacteria purposefully move toward where there is more sugar....
Ah, Soviet Architecture. How Stylish! Stalin’s Architect Had To Make Compromises (You Think?)
Rather than not build at all, he was prepared to build what the dictator demanded of him. As a result, Boris Iofan is now...
Streaming Services Are Consolidating Or “Rebundling.” Maybe Not A Good Idea
We live in an age when identity is intimately tied to cultural consumption. Trying to be everything to all people is a risky strategy...
Spotify Starts Selling Concert Tickets With Its Playlists
The site lists gigs that are available to book on the home page, and under the My events section, users can see their past...
Pew Study: Teen Social Media Use Has Doubled Since 2015
The share of 13- to 17-year-olds who say they're "almost constantly" online has nearly doubled, from 24% in 2014-15 to 46% today. Among Black...
A UK Band Dishes On Its Farcical Post-Brexit Problems Playing A European Tour
Live performances can account for 90%-95% of a band’s income, according to Help Musicians, but Brexit has cut into one of their most important...
Post-Modernist Wong Turn? Maybe We Need To Redefine Reality…
Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into...
How “Effective Altruism” Grew From A Movement Into A Lucrative Business
It’s safe to say that effective altruism is no longer the small, eclectic club of philosophers, charity researchers, and do-gooders it was just a...
Just In: A New Theatre Season That Exhibits All The Current Trends
"This playwright read a Wikipedia page that mentioned a fascinating historical incident wherein Benedict Arnold and Frank Sinatra spent a night at the same...
Cox Media Buys News Startup Axios For $525 Million
The deal offers a rare flicker of hope for the digital publishing sector, which has been fraught with difficulty for investors and operators over...
Canada’s New Online News Act Builds On Australia’s And Could Be A Model For...
The Canadian code probably won’t have a material financial impact on these platforms, but countries learning from each other, improving on the model, and...
Artists Will Get Resale Fees Under New Canadian Copyright Law
Painters, sculptors and other visual artists stand to get a payout when their work is resold at auction and by galleries, in a government...
John Harbison: My Life In Music
"I identify much more as a composer. A couple of times, I backed away from conducting for a while. I felt it’s not a...
The Line Between Art And Propaganda Sometimes Isn’t Easy To See
Values are promoted through cultural strategies where buzzwords chime loudly. Terms like networking, collaboration, common good, connection and cooperation promote an ever-closer union with...
Why People Are Attracted To The Density Of Urban Living
Rubbing shoulders with strangers is considered both a pleasure and a pain of urban life. Density can be an endless source of social possibility,...
Does Social Media Negate The Wisdom Of Crowds?
Here’s the thing about the wisdom of crowds – it only applies when those individual decisions are reached independently. Once we start influencing each...
From China To Amsterdam, Why Do So Many Bikes End Up In Urban Waterways?
Some of the bikes may have ended up in the canal by accident. Cyclists lost in the dark or disoriented by fog steer bikes...
Audiences Accept Modern Art. Why Not Modern Music?
More than 100 years after all the -isms in modern art, art lovers, art buyers, and masses of museumgoers throughout the world wholly accept...
Facebook’s New AI Chatbot Bizarrely Dishes On Its Corporate Overlords
Asked about Mark Zuckerberg, the bot told BuzzFeed’s Max Woolf that “he is a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical. It is...
New UK Guidance For Museums On Art Restitution
While cases regarding repatriation may be complex, the authors say, “they often present rich opportunities for enhancing understanding for all involved” by allowing the...
Fan Obsessions Are Changing The Ways TV Is Made
Audiences have begun to more actively engage with what they watch. They analyze, turning ambiguity into clarity, forging connections with fellow fans. As a...
Archaeologists Rebury Important Ancient Villa
“It may seem counterintuitive, but sometimes burying excavated ancient art and architecture is the best way to keep it safe from environmental and human...
Moral Grandstanding? Virtue Signaling? So…
“Moral grandstanding” and “virtue signaling” are slurs. They are variations on the charge of being “woke”, “politically correct,” etc., going at least as far...
Are We All Just Living In An Artificial Simulation?
This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Assume that in the far future, civilisations hugely more technically advanced than ours...
Should James Franco Play Fidel Castro In The New Biopic? (Cue Outcries)
On Friday, after the casting of a white U.S. actor in the role of a prominent Latin American political figure had drawn widespread condemnation online (including...
