Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Lots Of Great Art Entered The Public Domain This Week. Don’t Celebrate – Marvel...
This massive release isn’t something entirely worth celebrating. Instead, it’s a pointer to the sheer absurdity of American copyright law, which long ago came...
What The Movies From Decades Ago Predicted 2022 Would Look Like
As you can imagine, many of the visions from long ago about what today would look like were dystopian. Here's what they portrayed. -...
Judge Dismisses Nirvana Baby Album Cover Lawsuit
"He has re-enacted the photograph in exchange for a fee, many times; he has had the album title... tattooed across his chest; and he...
Broadway Box Office Rebounds but Still Struggling
Box office rebounded, climbing to $26 million from Christmas Week’s grim, Covid-decimated $14 million. That’s an overall, week-to-week increase of 87%, and reflects a...
Jan. 6 As Zombie Apocalypse?
In the 20 years that zombie apocalypse narratives have grown and reached critical mass in popular media, such comparisons at an insurrection at the seat of American democracy — where five...
Manuscript? With Words Created On Computers And Produced On Other Computers, What Is It?
A book nowadays is likely to have left its author’s computer to become a bunch of digital assets in Adobe InDesign. These digital assets...
Italy Returns Piece Of The Parthenon Marbles To Greece
Sicily’s regional archaeological museum said Wednesday it had signed an agreement with the Acropolis Museum in Athens for a once-renewable, four-year loan of the...
Tarnished Golden Globes: Diminished Into Irrelevance?
When the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. hands out this year’s awards on Sunday, there will be no party atmosphere: No TV show. No stars....
Vinyl Record Sales Are Booming – But The Pressing Plants Can’t Keep Up
Buyers want way more records than the only two remaining pressing facilities in Southern California, can supply. That’s true globally, too: There aren’t enough...
Lessons In Creativity From The Demise Of The Once-Ubiquitous Blackberry
The sheer number of cultural artifacts is stupefying. More photographs were taken yesterday than in the entire first century of photography. Odds are that some were...
Why Universal Music Group Supports A Far Right Senator
On Sunday, federal regulators put UMG’s PAC on notice, flagging the group for giving Marsha Blackburn more than the legal limit allowed in an election. -...
How Hobbies Took Over America (For Good And Bad)
“Hobbies take on this aura of being good, useful, appropriate, and socially sanctioned. Something you should—the word here is should—be doing. And if you’re one...
Art World Trends That Will Build In 2022
Above all else, the popularity of Immersive Everything spoke to the way in which a year-long period of cultural life existing mostly on tech platforms...
Yes We’re Productive. But Burned Out Too. A Revolution Is Under Way
For knowledge workers, the biggest sign that the status quo is broken is the rise in self-reported burnout. McKinsey and Lean In collaborated on...
We’re Awash In Stories. We’re Addicted To Stories. To What Effect?
Now that we have more storytelling than ever, has empathy increased apace? If stories have such sunny effects, why has the big bang of...
An Economist Wonders: Why In The Arts Are “The Greatest” All Oldies?
Why are composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Bach widely regarded as the greatest of all time? Why is it that in a 1985 survey of art experts...
Club To Harness Dancers’ Body Heat To Power Building
What if dance-floor catharsis could be good not only for the soul but also for the planet? This month, SWG3 and the geothermal energy...
No, Your Attention Span Didn’t Just Shrink. It Was Stolen
A small study of college students found they now only focus on any one task for 65 seconds. A different study of office workers...
Stephen Lawrence, Composer Of Sesame Street Music, 82
From Muppets to major stars, Lawrence composed the music for hundreds of Sesame Street songs. He also served as music director for Free to Be... You and...
Boston-Area Church Pays “Royalties” For Performing African-American Spirituals
"Today, we as a church will begin the practice of collecting ‘royalties’ ... for the spirituals we sing and worship. Whenever we sing Negro...
Venice’s Calatrava Footbridge Is A Visual Surprise in An Ancient City. But Pedestrians Have...
The glass floor of the bridge is slippery, and locals have learned to be careful. Warning signs posted by the city didn't help. So...
Stop Blaming Tribalism For What Ails Us
Although the notion that group solidarity leads inevitably to prejudice, animosity, and conflict is common, it is also incorrect and potentially dangerous. - The...
Latest Blockbuster Music Catalog Sale: David Bowie For $250 Million
The deal, for more than 400 songs, also includes soundtrack music; the material for Bowie’s short-lived band Tin Machine from the late 1980s and...
Opera House Appoints Italy’s First Woman Music Director
The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv said she was surprised to learn she was making history after receiving the offer from the Teatro Comunale opera...
When Harry Reid Helped Michael Heiser Realize His Magnum Opus
A lesser-known part of his legacy—one that’s arguably just as enduring as his political feats—is his campaign to preserve Nevada land that is host...
