Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Ravinia Recreates Leonard Bernstein In An Immersive Experience
What sticks, at least on a first viewing, is the technology at play—the light, the sound, the figures that look real enough to embrace. -...
A Cultural History Of Color
The Optical Society of America lists 2,755 primary colours, while paint manufacturers now offer more than 40,000 dyes and pigments, so many, says Fox,...
What The Cuttlefish Might Teach Us About The Ability To Remember
Most elderly people would have flunked a human version of the team’s experiments. But all of the cuttlefish passed, “an incredibly complex thing for...
What’s In A Name? Why Parents Are No Longer Naming Their Kids Alexa
Seven years ago, Amazon released Alexa, its voice assistant, and as the number of devices answering to that name has skyrocketed, its popularity with...
There’s Nothing Benign About Even Subtle Design Changes In Social Media
Social-media and streaming apps constantly change aspects of their “user experience,” which includes digital-interface design, to push users toward new features. - The New Yorker
Will Streaming Theatre Still Be Viable Once Stages Reopen?
“In the last few months, the requests for either virtual or digital performances from streaming have really dropped off dramatically. They’re still happening, but...
In 2014 A Town Painted Over A Banksy. This Time It Placed Guards To...
Criticism was fierce last time, so they don't want to take any chances. - BBC
Our AI Is Increasingly Built On Homogenized Data. That Could Be A Real Problem
Foundational models have some very real downsides. They create “a single point of failure, so any defects, any biases which these models have, any...
London’s Public Art Mound Is A Disaster. But…
It might seem confusing why local councils would choose to fund tourist projects like the Mound when they are getting rid of permanent spaces...
Why We Get Caught Up In Cults
“It doesn’t take someone broken or disturbed to crave that structure . . . we’re wired to. And what we often overlook is that...
Why Millions Are Quitting Their “Great” Jobs
These people are generally well-educated workers who are leaving their jobs not because the pandemic created obstacles to their employment but, at least in...
How Leonard Bernstein Became A Cultural Icon
This may now seem, to younger generations, a corny, indulgent, and completely irrelevant form of grandstanding. But when you go back and watch Leonard...
The Great Cultures Of Africa During Europe’s Dark Ages
Suffice it to say that while Europe was experiencing its Dark Ages – a period of intellectual, cultural, and economic regression from about the...
Riccardo Muti, Part II: Man From Another Century
He doesn't do smartphones, thinks talk shows are nonsensical, and reports: "Music is rapture, it’s not understanding. Go home all you music critics!" -...
A Trick To Get Beneath The Words
"On the first day of every month, I pick a poem, and then I read that poem every day that month." - The New...
Time To Re-Question The Idea Of Cultural Appropriation?
The very concept of “cultural appropriation” is misbegotten. As I’ve previously argued, it wrongly casts cultural practices as something like corporate intellectual property, an...
An Epic Battle For Control Of Hollywood
The bigger question facing studios, streaming services and talent agencies: How should stars and filmmakers be paid for movies and TV shows now that...
Francis Fukuyama Famously Declared The End Of History. Well…
For Fukuyama, the demise of the Soviet Union testified to the “total exhaustion of viable systemic alternatives” to––and thus, the “unabashed victory”––of “economic and...
Why Thinking Rationally Is Such A Challenge
It’s not that we don’t think—we are constantly reading, opining, debating—but that we seem to do it on the run, while squinting at trolls...
We Process Historic Events With Images. Afghanistan Is A Complicated Image
Phil Kennicott: "Countries, like travelers, want to make sense of things, which is why we reach for an image — a quick metaphor, a...
National Company Of “Wicked” Hires “Director Of Social Responsibility”
Working closely with labor unions and other production partners, Christina Alexander will implement strategic procedures related to hiring practices to identify qualified candidates from...
My Conversations With Suzanne Farrell
"Farrell is the only dancer who could inflect solos with such a dense and bewildering array of ideas that I felt I needed at...
Barbara Kruger On Being An Artist, A Consumer (And Not Being A TikTok Star)
"We live in this digital universe. Digital life has been emancipating and liberatory but at the same time it’s haunting and damaging and punishing...
Theatre’s Employment Problems
The harsh reality of layoffs and rehiring has sparked much confusion and pain among theatre workers, especially the technicians whose shops have sat empty...
How Napoleon Systematically Plundered Europe’s Art
These were not smash-and-grab operations. He sought out experts to advise him on which cultural treasures to ship back to Paris. Napoleon wanted to...