Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Quiet Value Behind The Enduring Success Of “Antiques Roadshow”
In a show whose segments are punctuated by dollar amounts, there’s actually a quiet, persistent suggestion to direct our aspirations somewhere else: history, family,...
Our Misperceptions Of How The Brain Works
“Scientists have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences." But these "are poor guides for understanding...
How The Counterculture Became The Main Culture
It’s a truism that high culture, as it used to be known, has been steadily losing its authority since the rise of mass culture...
How Publishing Literature Has Changed
Most authors have day jobs, which is nothing new; Herman Melville worked as a customs inspector. The difference in 2021 is that traditional side...
Data Science: The Creepiest, Most Ominous Word In Macbeth
It turns out that Macbeth uncanny flavor springs from the unusual way that Shakespeare deploys one particular word, over and over again. - OneZero
Was The Nuclear Family As Our Primary Social Unit A Mistake?
If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life...
How Finland Gets Support For The Arts? Make Politicians Museum Interns
During the internship day, decision-makers will familiarise them them with the workspaces of museum professionals, the researchers' rooms, archives and, for example, the reception...
Famous Writers Writing Books That Won’t Be Read For 100 Years
The works will be kept in a room lined with wood from the forest in the Deichman library in Oslo. One hundred years after...
A New Canon Of Climate Change Literature
It's part of a growing trend in publishing for books focused on the climate, whether from big hitters such as David Attenborough or Bill...
In Australia: Thousands Of Newly Canceled Gigs And Musicians Calling It Quits
With Australia reeling from the Delta strain, major festivals including Splendour and Bluesfest have been cancelled for the second year running, with an estimated 7,000...
COVID Has Changed How People Will Work For Non-Profits
No longer will many nonprofit (or for-profit, for that matter) employees be cowed into the belief that 60-, 80-, 100-, or 168-hour weeks are...
Dance Competitions – A Change Of Culture?
Dance competitions first emerged in the 1970s. Since then, they have spawned a distinctive, seductive subculture, mixing the hard-driving athleticism of organized sports with...
Origins Of The Term “Woke”
"A quarter of people think of it as a compliment, a quarter of people think it's an insult and the rest either don't know...
OnlyFans Reverses Ban On Sex Workers. Creators Are Still Worried…
What remains is an uncertain future for both creators and OnlyFans, which has plans to go public later this year. The site has more...
Algorithms Are Directing How I Grieve For My Dead Mother
I can hide my mom’s photos or block her zombie Facebook account. But I’ve become accustomed to grieving this way. Technology has dictated what...
Smithsonian Kicks Off Multi-Year Project To Reckon With America’s Racial History
“Giving people the reality — here’s the information, here’s a way to contextualize the moment we are in — you can’t build optimism unless you face the...
The Psychology Of Movie Trailer Music
“It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is...
Canada’s National Ballet Outside (And It’s So Much More Complicated Than That)
Given such limited capacity and the pent-up eagerness of ballet fans, all four performances were fully booked almost as soon as they were announced....
Luis Alfaro’s Plan To Make LA A Theatre Dynamo
“A theater is best expressed by the work it initiates. I think it’s really important that we not just bring in the great work...
Is Our Digital World Squeezing Out Our Ability To Wander?
The idea of the urban rambler—the flâneur—as a half-belonging creature took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and adopted a variety...
Sotheby’s Hires A Gallery Wrangler. What Does This Signal About The Art World?
What’s changed is not that art fairs have been diminished but that the auction houses built broader sales and marketing platforms in the years...
Why Charlie Watts Was The Engine Behind The Stones
Watts’s drumming was unique. He differed from his peers in the rock drumming pantheon, partly due to being a jazz aficionado, a sensibility that...
Oops! Landmark Study On Honesty Used Fake Data
The data were collected by an insurance company, Dan Ariely says, but he no longer has records of interactions with it that could reveal...
The Fascinating New Science Exploring Consciousness
Consciousness has long been the preserve of philosophers and priests, poets and artists; now neuroscientists are investigating the mysterious quality and trying to answer...
AI Cloned Val Kilmer’s Voice So He Could Speak After Cancer Surgery
The generated voices have gotten more realistic in the age of deepfakes, a technology that uses AI to manipulate content to look and sound...
