Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
How History Has Become “Post-Literate”
It is now difficult to imagine the mass of general readers—assuming they exist—being reached even by a historian of genius. Historiography is becoming stuck....
How Shen Yun Dance Made $266 Million
By the end of last year, tax records show, it had more than a quarter of a billion dollars, stockpiling wealth at a pace...
Jimmy Carter On Arts And Culture:
"We have no ministry of culture in this country, and I hope we never will. No matter how democratic a government may be, no...
Charles Dolan, Media Pioneer, HBO Founder, 98
Charles Dolan was one of the cable TV industry’s most aggressive operators and marketers. He created the nation’s first urban cable television network, Manhattan...
2024 Was Supposed To Be Break Dancing’s Breakout Year. It Didn’t Happen
“We’re making the same mistakes in our culture. We’re allowing the appropriation, the exportation. We’re trying to fix it for everybody else except for...
The Pianos Nobody Wants
"I would say that the era for old uprights is coming to a close. The inevitability is that one day, those pianos will be...
The Impressionistic Bob Dylan Biopic
“The movie is full of things that didn’t happen, but the way they happen in those scenes feels right to me." - The Guardian
ARTnews Picks The Defining Artworks Of 2024
A bias toward contemporary art has pervaded museums across the globe for decades now, but as this year proved, work from past eras can...
How Much Does Our Language Shape The Ways We Think?
Many researchers find another reason to worry about the spread of English: the prospect of cognitive hegemony. Languages, they argue, influence how we perceive...
America’s Elite Education Problem
Elite education has lost the trust of many Americans, in no small part because of how it solidifies the advantages of wealth. The fact...
Where We Went Wrong: Effort As The Goal Rather Than Accomplishment
The problem is that we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in...
Of Course AI Won’t Replace Human Creativity. We’ve Been Struggling To Define Genius For...
Culture dictates human action far more than individual humans dictate cultural production. To understand great works of art as human achievements is just as...
People Won’t Listen To Facts. Our Information Economy Has Overwhelmed Us
No amount of evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way or the other. We can attribute some of...
The Replica Shop: Paris Atelier Makes Exacting Reproductions Of Some Of The World’s Most...
The atelier’s commissions have included replacing a third of Versailles’s garden statues with copies created from marble-dust resin and supplying Jeff Koons with five...
Eight Ways Artists Have Incorporated AI Into Their Work
A Ditto Music survey of over 1,200 artists found that nearly 60% use AI in their projects. Tools like AIVA generate compositions based on specific parameters, replicating...
How Hollywood’s Struggles Are Impacting LA’s Economy
When the strikes ended, workers in Hollywood hoped their schedules would finally fill up again. But for many people, things only got worse. -...
Research: How Walmart Impoverishes Communities
On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all....
The Year Peter Gelb Declared War On Critics
Believing that you possess a perfect understanding of what the people want is a poor way to run an opera company—or any organization, up...
Spotify Doesn’t Care About Music As Long As It’s Content
Unlike a record label, a tech company doesn’t care whether we’re hooked on the same hit on repeat or lost in a three-hour ambient...
Berlin Cuts €130 Million From Its Arts Budget
The budget cut is a departure from Berlin’s previous plan to inject the city’s cultural spaces with new capital. In 2021, Germany approved a...
K-Pop Has Been Fueling South Korean Protests
The sight of young people moving to K-pop’s electrifying beat has become part of the drama of this protest movement. Protest organisers are blasting out K-pop...
Handel’s “Messiah’s” Rocky Start
When the librettist obtained a copy of the score, in early 1743, he didn’t like it. “His Messiah has disappointed me,” he wrote to...
How UK Theatre Got To This Point (20 Years That Defined A Crisis)
Twenty years ago marked a turning point for the arts in the UK. And not a good one. - The Stage
Florence Open’s Vasari’s 16th Century Corridor Built For Medicis
The corridor, designed by the Renaissance-era architect Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned in 1565 by Cosimo I de’ Medici, the second duke of Florence, and...
Canada Proposes Resale Royalties For Visual Artists
Monday’s fall economic statement included the proposed update to the copyright act, which will give Canadian visual artists a slice of the proceeds if...
