Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
What A Long Overdue Kaethe Kollwitz Show Says About MoMA’s Expanded Vision
Charting its way through changing times, MoMA is building out how it tells that history in the 21st Century, increasingly embracing women, African-American artists and...
Amid Financial And Leadership Woes, San Francisco Symphony Considers Cutting Its Chorus
Dozens of San Francisco Symphony Chorus members say leadership has proposed slashing their budget by up to 80%, a move they believe could further tarnish the...
Climate Change, Pandemics… We Face Global Threats. Our National Governments Aren’t Equipped
This basic mismatch between the scale of the problem and the scale of possible solutions is a source of many of today’s failures of...
Major Recording Labels Sue Verizon For Not Banishing Pirates
Verizon "knowingly provides its high-speed service to a massive community of online pirates," said the complaint filed in US District Court for the Southern District of...
Does Music Lose Its Power When It’s Too Easy To Make, Too Easy To...
Music being too easy to make means too much of the same music is made, “making it harder to find really exceptional things.” Because...
Disney’s Plan To Keep You Watching More
The entertainment giant is developing a host of new features aimed at lengthening the amount of time subscribers spend viewing its shows and movies....
Nicholas Serota’s Plan For The UK Arts Sector In The New Era
The plan includes putting culture and creativity at "the heart of education" and advocating "for the role culture can play in local renewal", as...
Hum-And-Search Music Is Here
The tool lets people hum the song, sing the song or even play the song on another instrument. The feature is rolling out to...
Peter Schjeldahl And The Art Of Dying
Like Karl Marx and Jim Harrison, who died at their desks, and George Orwell, who was writing a book review when he died, Schjeldahl...
Former British Museum Head Gets A Shiny New Job
In the release, the commission said it had chosen Hartwig Fischer, 61, because of his “global expertise in leading international cultural institutions and museums.”...
On The Decline: Can Opera Survive In The UK?
Fast forward to 2024, one Brexit vote and a global pandemic later, and opera companies are facing relentless budget cuts and declining public popularity....
The Case Against Historians Weighing In On Current Affairs
"I’ve been writing for years in opposition to professional historians pressing—on the public, on the media, on politicians and judges—a sense of the hyperurgent...
Christopher Knight, Art Detective, Hunts Down A Mis-Dated Diego Rivera
LACMA’s website and a gallery wall label said the painting dates to “around 1939.” But that couldn’t be correct. It’s hard to photograph a...
Remaking The Alamo: How To Tell The Story?
If the new museum focuses too much on slavery or other unsavory aspects of Texas history, it may deter visitors to one of the...
A Neurocognitive Ability Scientists Are Linking To Creativity
By examining how creative people process salient information, the researchers aimed to uncover a fundamental mechanism that could explain the unique attentional patterns observed...
How The London Philharmonic Approaches Programming
In the States, unions are very strong and rigorous, and they protect their members until they retire. I found the British scene to be...
Remembering Shelley Duvall’s Olive Oyl Dance
Dance “people” will recognize the innate beauty of her pose that is rooted in the cartoon version of OO as gangly. Even in her...
The Idea Of “Timeless” Art Is Transitory
There was in the 19th century, a growing feeling that, far from there being universal standards of taste and beauty, every age needed to...
Inside Out 2 Becomes Pixar’s Top-Earning Movie Of All Time
Inside Out 2 finished Tuesday with $1.251 billion in global ticket sales, including $543.5 million in North America, where it’s already the third-biggest animated pic...
Florida Theatres Offer To Give Up Grants If Desantis Restores Arts Funding For Others
Leaders of The Orlando Fringe and Tampa Fringe described the governor’s description as inaccurate on Thursday at a news conference, but they said it...
Chicago’s American Academy Of Art To Close After 100 Years
The announcement blamed the pandemic and sought to frame the school’s demise in a broader context of falling student numbers: “The decision to close...
Inside The Fight To Save Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch
The story of the sprawling former estate of pop singer Michael Jackson took a new turn this week when Neverland Ranch stood in the...
Galleries: Shaping The Palm Springs Scene
The pandemic certainly shut down the social art scene. Inevitably, collectors became more comfortable purchasing art sight unseen. People of means found themselves restricted...
Is This The LA Philharmonic’s Next Music Director?
In L.A., Chan’s appearances at Walt Disney Concert Hall have already proved notable. Last year, she got her 15 minutes of unwanted viral fame...
Work Has Become Endless Meetings
The share of the typical white-collar workday spent in meetings has steadily increased for the past few decades, and it continues to grow by...