Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Anne Midgette: The Kennedy Center Putsch
Even a president as attuned to the details of Kennedy Center programming as Nixon didn’t try to directly take a hand in running the...
How To bridge Humanities And Science? Try Math
We must recognise that the natural and the mental order of things go hand in hand. Neither can be fully understood without the other....
Australia’s Venice Biennale Scandal
Events have moved quickly since Thursday night when Creative Australia sensationally dumped the Sydney-based multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi as the nation’s representative for the 2026 edition...
The Trump Threat To Academic Research and Publication
Pressures from the Trump administration threaten an already beleaguered research enterprise that historically has thrived on doing basic research with minimal influence from partisan politics and...
An Important New Definition Of Fair Use In The AI World
In 2020, Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence for copyright infringement, alleging that Ross had scraped Thomson Reuters’ own law database, known as Westlaw, to create its database,...
The House In LA Where Music History Burned
Before it burned, Charlie Springer’s house contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, hundreds of signed musical...
The New Pianos That Play Better Than Anyone
Recent years have seen a surge in options for physical customization of the piano and an enormous leap forward in the merging of acoustic...
A Look At New Visions For The British Museum
The problem is that this was really an ideas competition, with entrants expected to produce not detailed designs but rather a flavour of what...
FCC Commissioner Sics Investigation Of Comcast Over Diversity
The FCC's Brendan Carr this week leaked word to right wing propaganda mill Newsmax that he’s tasked the FCC’s enforcement bureau with launching an investigation into...
Florida Lawmakers Debate Restoring Arts Funding DeSantis Cut
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ $32 million line-item vetoes stripped away funding for local theater groups, arts festivals, museums and more, sparking outrage in Florida last year. Now, a...
Want To Accomplish Big Things? Here’s How Scientists Made The Moon A Destination
It can be easy to take our maps, images and story of the Moon for granted. But over the past six decades, our cultural...
The Book Blurb Announcements, Explained
One big author and one major publisher announced within weeks of each other that they were through with the practice of blurbs, and the...
Spotify’s Illusion Of Music Discovery And Choice
You may not agree with Mood Machine that Spotify’s mixes are an existential threat to the way people discover music, but you may marvel at how...
How Trump’s Tariffs Will Disrupt The Art Market
“If you’re spending 10 million on a work of art and you’re paying $1 million or $2 million, or even $2.5 million in tariffs because it was imported,...
Chappell Roan’s Grammy Speech For Helping Artists Was… Naive
Roan gets respect and true appreciation for her artistry and gumption but is far too green and too uninformed to be the agent of...
The Real Problem With Trump’s Edict About Building Classical Buildings
Like its 2020 predecessor, the new order has little to do with classical architecture in any meaningful way—which itself has been decontextualized from its...
Romance Fiction Is Hot. Here’s How It Works
According to Leah Koch, just two things make a romance novel: a central love story and a happy ending. “A criticism I hear a...
Arts Organizations Have Heavily Invested In DEI Initiatives. Will New NEA Rules Lock Them...
The new N.E.A. rules require applicants to agree not to operate diversity programs “that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws” and call on grant applicants...
Study: Reliance On AI May Erode Critical Thinking Skills
“The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight when using GenAI,” the researchers wrote....
Reuters Wins First Copyright Lawsuit Over AI
In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’...
New Trump Kennedy Center Fires Deborah Rutter, Install New Board Leaders
The Kennedy Center board of trustees voted Wednesday afternoon to install President Donald Trump as chairman of the board, cementing the plan Trump announced Friday to overhaul...
The Taliban Banned Music. So What Happened To Afghanistan’s Musicians?
“It’s very strange, because one day we were honourable, respectable people of our city,” he said. “Then just one day later we became victims...
PBS Closes Its DEI Office
“In order to best ensure we are in compliance with the President’s executive order around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion we have closed our DEI...
The Beginning Of the End For Big Research Universities?
In practical terms, this means that every $1 million grant given to a school could have been transformed, at the stroke of midnight, into...
Assessing The Artistic Losses From The LA Fires
Every arts organization has been touched by the flames in one way or another. Administrators are now assessing what the future looks like, as...
