Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
End Of An Aura: Licensing Company Forbids Vegas Wedding Chapels From Using Elvis
The licensing company that controls the name and image of “The King” is ordering Sin City chapel operators to stop using Elvis in themed...
Why We Can’t Stop Measuring Things
Around 6,000 years ago, the first standardised units were deployed in river valley civilisations such as ancient Egypt, where the cubit was defined by...
Why Are We So Attracted To Disaster Stories?
Maybe we rubberneck over disasters because we are bored by our relatively cushy safety. Or maybe we can’t avoid the threats as they creep...
Writer Who Wrote About Killing Husband Is Convicted Of Killing Husband
Ms. Brophy, who had written self-published romance novels, had once speculated in a 2011 blog post that a wife who kills her spouse must...
How They Lifted A Historic Times Square Theatre Thirty Feet
The theater, which weighs 14 million pounds, is a protected landmark, meaning the structure, from the stage to the balcony, had to be moved...
The Problem With Times Square
The more crowded Times Square becomes with visitors, the more off-putting it is for the white-collar office workers who now have the choice to...
The Internet Is Broken. Here’s How To Fix It
The root is simple: The internet is broken because the internet is a business. While the issues are various and complex, they are inextricable from...
Has NYC Finally Gotten serious About Prosecuting The Illegal Antiquities Trade?
“That’s unheard of. It used to be a gentleman’s sport done by gentleman for gentleman. Now these gentleman and gentlewomen of the trade are...
Garrison Keillor’s Next Act
“I feel like I’m starting a new life as a writer,” he says to me. “What I have is a pleasure in writing that...
Not Just Top Gun: US Military Has Had Editorial Control Over Thousands Of Movies
The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have exercised direct editorial control over more than 2,500 films and television shows. These discoveries raise questions...
First Look: Pix Of Bradley Cooper As Leonard Bernstein
“I (told Spielberg), ‘I always felt like I could play a conductor, but may I research the material and see if I can write...
Artists Boycott Marquee British Art Show
The British Art Show is being staged at four venues across the city. But 26 artists have pulled out in protest after accusations of...
Artist Pays For Grilled Cheese Sandwich With Painting. Now The Painting Is Worth $272,000
The sandwich, priced at $1.95, was made with fresh bread from a local Italian bakery, aged cheddar cheese and a substantial smear of butter...
Orchestra League Launches New Commissioning Program
The initiative announced on Thursday will build on those efforts, pairing each of the six composers with five ensembles. The program, which will cost...
Stiff Sentence For Artworld Fraudster Rattles Art World
In other words, the sentence was meant to scare off or inhibit potential fraudsters with the threat of substantial incarceration time. With it, Judge...
Meet Pitchbot – Media Criticism Through Parody
With his account, NYT Pitchbot imagines the Times formula for stories as a kind of wheezing algorithm, a bot churning out contrarian headlines and half-baked hot...
Imagination Is Critical For Learning. So Why Don’t We Teach It?
Studying the imagination is the most exciting and accurate way to heal the terminal divide between the sciences and the humanities. But, more importantly,...
The Latest AI Superpower? Describe An Image And The Computer Will Create It
In each case, the text at the bottom of the image was the prompt fed into the program, and the picture above, the output....
How Pacific Northwest Ballet Is Progressing With Diversity
“The company is more racially diverse today than it was in 2020, when about 30% of the company was BIPOC. Racial identity should only...
Canada Tries To Make A Case For Internet Regulation Because Of… The Arts?
The emphasis: that material cultural and live performance follow the virtual. It’s an odd hierarchy to be asserting to an arts gathering emerging from...
Today’s Students — The Problem With “Excellent Sheep”
Excellent sheephood is inherently competitive. Its purpose is to vault you into the ranks of society’s winners, to make sure that you end up...
Denmark Imposes Tax On Streamers To Support Local Programming
Lawmakers in Denmark have agreed global TV streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Disney, must pay a levy of 6% of their revenue...
Meet Glimmerglass’s New Director
Robert Ainsley succeeds Francesca Zambello, who led Glimmerglass, a summer festival of opera and theater, for more than a decade. In an interview, Ainsley...
New Technology Makes Lost Cities Of The Amazon Visible From The Air
Perched in a helicopter some 650 feet up, scientists used light-based remote sensing technology (lidar) to digitally deforest the canopy and identify the ancient...
Do The Words We Use Really Change The Way We Think?
John McWhorter: For example, the pathway from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” New words ultimately don’t leave freighted ideas behind; they...
