ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Douglas McLennan

Douglas McLennan
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Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal

Will LA MOCA Recover Its Footing?

Yes, LA MOCA is having trouble again. "MOCA’s current trials have come just as the museum was hoping to emerge from a tumultuous history...

The Great Mural Wall Of Los Angeles Gets An Extension

Judy Baca's 2,700-foot mural Great Wall shows the history of the city, from pre-historic California through the 1950s. But the 1950s were a long...

Fred Jordan, Who Defied Censorship And Published The Avant Garde, 95

At Grove Press, Jordan and Barney Rosset led the charge to publish as they wished. "Grove’s lawyers were instrumental in overturning anti-pornography court rulings against D.H....

Can This Modernist Gem Be Saved?

The planned demolition of the Derby Assembly Rooms, product of a 1970 architectural competition and former host to big acts from The Clash to...

A California Appeals Court Holds Amazon Responsible In Third-Party Sales

A hoverboard burst into flames, harming the person who bought it from a third-party seller on Amazon Marketplace and leading to a court case...

Music Festivals In The UK Say They’ll Have To Cancel Without Government Help

The main problem is an inability to get coronavirus cancellation insurance (perhaps understandable at this point). - BBC

Disney Apparently Decided Not To Pay Some Authors Their Royalties

And now there's a task force trying to get the authors of novels in the Indiana Jones, Buffy, and Star Wars universes the royalties...

Returning Moviegoers Are Ready For More

After being stuck at home, without movie cinemas, for well over a year, it's time to break out the big bucks for all of...

James Prigoff, Who Documented And Championed Street Art, 93

Prigoff was a the co-author, with Henry Chalfant, of Spraycan Art, "a foundational book in the street-art field that featured more than 200 photographs...

Seven Stories Press Runs Indie Risks, Reaps A Nobel Prize Winner

Running an independent press isn't easy in an era of consolidation - and in a pandemic. Seven Stories' editor-in-chief: "As a business the time...

A Humble Alley Boasts Hollywood History

Can tourists gain more appreciation of the real Hollywood - could the city do more (a lot more) to help them leave invigorated, and...

Rome’s Colosseum To Get New High-Tech Floor

Milan Ingegneria, a structural engineering and architecture firm, has won an €18.5m (£16m) bid to build and install a retractable arena floor that will...

How Genre Fiction Can Help Literary Fiction Deal With Assault

Crime fiction is, roughly speaking, concerned with plot - and literary fiction (again, roughly speaking) with the interior of characters' thoughts. Sometimes, that means...

Reimagining Black Life And Death Onscreen

The Oscar-nominated short film A Love Song for Latasha, says filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison, was one way of figuring how to deal with the...

Move Over, Thomas Edison And The Lumiere Brothers

Britain may no longer have an empire, but at least it could have this: the title of the "true" father of cinema. "Film director...

The Grammys Overhaul Again, Eliminating Secret Committees

The scandal-plagued Recording Academy is making the change after decades of complaints. Instituted in 1989, "the committees’ work began to be seen as evidence...

Asian American Choreographers And Dancers Demand Recognition

After the shootings in Atlanta, the already planned 10,000 Dreams Virtual Choreography Festival transformed into something that Asian American ballet dancers and choreographers have...

The Pivot To YouTube

For Oscar-winner Brie Larson, who won for Room and has since played Captain Marvel in the eponymous movie and Avengers: Endgame, it's not as...

Evaluating Eli Broad In Los Angeles

He was a friend and foe to museums, writes Christopher Knight. And Carolina Miranda writes, "Over the course of his life, he helped bring...

The NY Phil Goes Traveling, In A Shipping Container

Last year it was a Ford F-250 pickup truck that saved the day, and the audiences around the city. "Bandwagon 2 will trade in...

Jhumpa Lahiri On Living In Linguistic Exile, And Translating Her Own Work

That would be the book (Dove mi trovo, or Whereabouts) she wrote first in Italian and then translated into English - her first novel...

Rotten Tomatoes Added A 1941 Review That Wrecked Citizen Kane’s Perfect Rating

Citizen Kane used to have a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Then things changed. "The writer, credited as Mae Tinee (a play on...

Writing Mainstream TV Shows About Native American Families

It's normal - but an exciting kind of normal - for Sydney Freeland. When she started film school, "I remember thinking, like, ‘OK, wait....

Holbein Left A Clever Clue In A Portrait Of Henry VIII’s Wife

Which wife? Well, for centuries, everyone thought it was Catherine Howard (the second of the beheadeds in the old rhyme). Instead, thanks to Hans...

Directing Isn’t Easy At The Best Of Times

But for an Asian American director during the pandemic, kicking off Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month via an online platform, it's a...
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