Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Canada’s CBC Expands Its Coverage Of Books
CBCbooks, the division behind Canada Reads, is readying a new consumer-facing one-hour national literary program, Bookends With Mattea Roach. - Publishing Perspectives
Evergreen Question: Just What, Exactly, Is Poetry?
Poetry has drastically changed after World War Ⅱ; it’s parted from art—including poems, waka, haiku, and novels written until around the end of the...
Scholarship That Reinvigorates 20th Century Dance
When you peel away layers of cliché and coarseness accrued over the course of the twentieth century, you often find works that are full...
London’s National Portrait Gallery Appoints Its First Woman Director
In 2012, Victoria Siddall rose to prominence after launching Frieze Masters, going on to become global director of the contemporary art fair, which takes place...
Music As Protest: Louisville Kids Make Music Video To Protest School Bus Cuts
“Where My Bus At” highlights the budget cuts made to school bus routes. In April 2024, the county board of education voted to remove...
We Use Visualizations To Understand Data. But We Can Use Music Too
“Vision is one of the most obvious and direct ways to process input, but when you think about it, you use your ears a...
Showings Of Anti-Putin Film At Venice Film Festival Abruptly Canceled
Georgian anti-Putin drama The Antique, which was due to premiere in Venice parallel section Giornate degli Autori (GdA), has had its screenings suspended following the issuing of an emergency...
How We Build Learning Over Time
When we think about what makes our minds special, we tend to focus on intelligence. But if we want to grasp reality in all...
Spotting AI Fakes: Can Art Historians Help?
One issue is that every image is worth scrutinizing as a cultural object that conveys values—but only if we can be certain about its...
How ChatGPT Is Transforming Blind People’s Relationship With Visual Art
Be My AI noted that DALL-E does not “‘see’ in the human sense; it processes data and identifies patterns within that data.” I countered,...
Themes From This Year’s Edinburgh Festivals
From climate anxiety to Gaza and the culture wars, here are some of the most talked-about shows and themes from the festival. - The...
Wrestling With Graffiti As An Artistic Intervention
This devotional, graphomaniac, filibustering dimension of graffiti haunts me. It suggests tagging as a version of call-and-response, within a city whose cacophony of advertising,...
Artists Take To Edinburgh Fringe Stages To Protest Scottish Funding Cuts
Protest messages were read out after performances, including at the Traverse, Lyceum, George Square, Summerhall and Church Hill theatres, to loud applause from audiences,...
King Charles Appoints A New Master Of The King’s Music
Errollyn Wallen succeeds Dame Judith Weir, the first woman to hold the role, who was chosen by Queen Elizabeth II in July 2014. In...
What Happens When Your Essential Creative Collaborator Dies?
The experience of grieving Adam was going to be braided with the thing that could bring me closest to him, which was a gift. -...
Yuval Sharon: Opera As Revolutionary Force
For every composer affirming authority in their work, opera’s history offers counterexamples: creators so committed to establishing a new world order in sound that...
Ukrainians Turn To Culture As Russia Attacks
The destruction of so much of their culture has not just pushed Ukrainians farther away from the Russian-dominated cultural space they shared for decades...
Is There A Seventh Generation Of Chinese Filmmakers?
It has not materialised in any formal sense, and the term is not in use. - Sidecar
The Biological Case Against Free Will
The intent you form, the person you are, is the result of all the interactions between biology and environment that came before.… Each prior...
The Warehouse Worker Philosopher (With A Podcast)
He never did get that high-school degree—let alone attend a doctoral program in philosophy. His layman’s approach to serious thinking has left him untainted...
Ballet Russes Was Hugely Influential. A Look At Annotated Music Scores Gives Insight Into...
These scores, which had never been publicly shown together, offered an uncommon perspective on the Ballets Russes productions that defined and transformed a generation...
In War, Poetry Has Become Very Popular In Ukraine
Over the past two years, poets have emerged as some of the nation’s most popular voices, their verse capturing the raw emotions of the...
Tampa Bay Times Book Critic Signs Off
"As book critic I’ve read, on average, three books per week, about 150 per year, which adds up to about 2,500 books over 17...
“Inside Out 2” Becomes First Animated Film To Earn $1 Billion At The Box...
Though 55 films have grossed $1 billion globally (which is comprised of domestic and international ticket sales), just a dozen have managed to hit...
Books Are Ideas, Yes. But I Need To Hold Them
"I will always prefer a book I can hold in my hand, the kind that smells of paper and glue, the kind whose unfolding...