Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Study: Seeing Theatre Increases Empathy, Influences Behavior
Seeing theatre changed people’s behavior. After seeing the plays, people donated more to charity — whether or not the charity was related to the...
How DeepFake Voices Are hanging Hollywood
The voice imitation revolution is already here, and artists, technologists and companies in several industries who use the new tech are grappling with the...
Why Do We Go To War? It’s Quite Simple, Really
There are only three such impulses: greed, self-defense, and ideas or emotions. - The Nation
Why Framing The Question Is The Most Important Part Of The Debate
Any question, any debate must be formulated. How and whether the question can be resolved is contingent on the way it is formulated. - 3...
New Data On Who Leads America’s Dance Companies
There have been 207 Artistic Directors employed by the Largest 50 US ballet companies to date. Of the 207 Artistic Directors, only 60 have...
Abusive Philanthropy…
When donors require stewardship – due to insistent input on the inner workings of the organization, threats of withholding financial support, or continual adamant requirements to...
How Cincinnati Opera Is Reinventing Itself… Outdoors
“When we made the decision that we couldn’t perform indoors in Music Hall, the hunt was on. Of course, the first obvious choice would...
A Lackluster Opening Olympics
Unfortunately, the messaging was muddled — the ideas crowding one another out — by a ceremony most notable for how small and muted the...
Where AI Is Scariest? Its Ability To Speak
Artificial intelligence is an ethical quagmire. Its power can be more than a little nauseating. But there’s a kind of unique horror to the...
Misconceptions About The Relationship Between Arts And Sports
While there are many sports devotees in the Australian arts sector (as a search for the Twitter hashtag #aflartsmafia reveals), the fallacy continues that...
How Much Of Your Life Has Been Determined By Fiction?
"There is a kind of bibliomancy, the use of books in divination, to being a reader of fiction. This magical concept begins while book...
Can US Cultural Policy Better Reflect American Values?
The US is one of the largest markets for cultural goods, so it makes good sense that our country has taken a leading role...
How US Teen Culture Took Over The World
Universal secondary education not only elevated Americans by spreading relevant knowledge and skills to the masses. It also gave rise to a more complex...
The Olympics May No Longer Be Sustainable In Their Present Form
Whether it’s the young people and local businesses left traumatized by evictions due to London 2012 Games, the elderly tenants whose homes were destroyed to make way for the new National Stadium...
HBO Streaming Sees Big Surge In Subscribers
With its 2.8 million Q2 2021 subscribers, HBO Max now has 47 million subscribers in the United States, and a total of 67 million...
China Outlaws Super-tall Buildings
The building boom in China was often a kind of arms race between cities trying to outcompete each other and grab global attention, typically...
Many Musicians Quit During The Pandemic. Many Won’t Be Going Back
Dozens of musicians in the Pittsburgh area and around the country are either adjusting their careers to include more stable side hustles in the...
Want To Spread A Complicated Idea? Social Media Influencers Can’t Help
Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that new and provocative ideas emerge at the edge of networks, from people with fewer contacts and little obvious pull. - Fast...
Oh, The Stories We Tell About Works Of Art… Any Of Them True?
The treasures residing in august museums, the antiquities we revere. They acquire meaning as the stories around them grow. Problem is... - London Review...
We Need To Rethink Honorific Titles Such As “Professor”
Tyler Cowan: "Why for instance should I be called “Professor Cowen,” but few people would address the person fixing their toilet as “Plumber Jones”?"...
We Need To Reattach Desire And Creativity. Enter A Philosophy of Porn
It has become unfashionable to subject pornography, and the market of desire it serves, to ethical critique, largely because of the broader embrace of...
Meet Arts Emerson’s New Programmer
“What really stuck out to us was … Ronee’s real commitment to inclusivity, her real commitment to BIPOC artists and elevating those voices. But...
Artists Protest Polish Government’s Plans To Oust National Gallery Director
More than 800 Polish artists, curators and critics have written to the country’s culture minister opposing plans to remove the director of the Zachęta – National...
Hollywood’s Diversity Problem — In Numbers
The study found that overall, 16.1% of the below-the-line workforce is Latino and 4.7% is Asian American. Both groups are dramatically underrepresented compared with...
UK Report: 80,000 Jobs, £4 billion, Lost In The Arts Sector During COVID
According to the report, music, performing and visual arts have also lost 26% of jobs – 80,000 – due to the Covid-19 pandemic. -...