Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Making The Case For Fra Angelico
“Fra Angelico,” which opens Friday and runs through Jan. 25, is one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the year. Bringing together more than 140 works...
Why Some Cities Thrive While Others Decline
"Although cities develop new activities and abandon old ones, they do so in a way that keeps their coherence constant. This suggests that such...
Harvard Has Been Quietly Dismantling DEI Programs
Over the last several months, Harvard has made significant changes to identity-focused programming — eliminating or rebranding entire programs abruptly and with minimal, if...
How Architects Are Using AI To Transform The Creative Process
“Instead of having to go build a prototype physically or a model room, you can take people on this journey and then make the...
On America’s 250th Birthday: Where’s The Pittsburgh Symphony’s American Music?
Of the symphony’s 20 classical subscription concerts, only two of them feature American works in those all-important, major-work slots. Both of those concerts will...
UK Music Venues Are Dying. Might A BYOB Business Model Save Them?
“Some clubs are charging £5 for a ticket, you get to the bar and it’s £12 for a double,” meaning cash-strapped students will stay...
A Crisis In Australia’s Arts Sector. Is There A Way To Revitalize The Arts?
Left as it is, the nation’s not-for-profit performing arts sector will not survive. The whole system is teetering on the edge of artistic and...
This Year’s Booker Prize Finalists
The shortlist includes Indian-born author Kiran Desai, 19 years after she won the prize, as well as past nominees Andrew Miller and David Szalay....
What AI Has Provoked: An Existential Crisis At Universities
If the university exists only to warehouse knowledge and to transmit tradition, then it is doomed. But the university’s inability to claim a near...
Controversies About AI Writing Put Our Language Conventions To Test
Humans do not think or speak in sentences; we think and speak in thoughts, which interrupt and introduce and complicate one another in a...
Comedians Are Square In The Authoritarian Sights
It’s easy to roll your eyes at late-night comedians getting applause for mocking the president. Many people, myself included, found some of those jokes...
What Happens When You Spend Three Hours Staring At A Painting
This exercise in what she calls immersive attention has remained a core element of Jennifer Roberts’s art history teaching for more than a decade, despite the...
Are We At A Turning Point For Museums?
“The general tone is concern and uncertainty. I’m not sure anyone feels like they have a clear road map to sustainability.” - Artnet
Federal Court Slaps Down New NEA Prohibitions Against Funding “Gender Ideology”
The lawsuit was filed in March by several arts organizations, including Rhode Island Latino Arts, which promotes art made by Latinos, and National Queer Theater, a...
Jimmy Kimmel Returns — On His Own Terms
Kimmel’s strident stance last night made clear that he had prevailed in his weeklong power struggle with Disney; he was addressing the controversy on...
Minnesota Art Groups See Some Glimmers Through The Challenges
“In a time of storm, cows run and take cover, which prolongs the experience. But buffalo run to the storm to get through it...
Rethinking The Choreography Of Gerald Arpino
Popular and productive, Arpino, who was 85 when he died in 2008, didn’t get much respect from influential critics. At various times they called...
Is Licensing A Better Solution Than Suing For AI Copyright?
One method some people are starting to explore is licensed use. So what exactly does that mean – and is it really a solution...
The College Admissions Game Is Rigged
We trade admissions tips in Reddit threads, spend our vacations squeezing in yet another campus tour and treat every rejection as proof that the...
Recording Companies Adopt Book Publishers’ Tactics To Sue Suno Over Copyright Theft
The complaint suggests that Suno may have ‘stream-ripped’ millions of copyrighted sound recordings to train its model. The timing of the new allegations appears directly connected to Anthropic’s recent USD...
First There Was Clickbait. Now There’s AI Chatbait
Lately, chatbots seem to be using more sophisticated tactics to keep people talking. In some cases, like my request for headache tips, bots end...
How Art Has Historically Depicted Aging
Physical signs of aging — baldness, wrinkles, stooped postures — first figured prominently in Roman portraiture in the 4th century BCE, but old age...
Can AI Help With Promoting Literacy? (Or Hurt…)
Across the US, parents, educators, and community groups are trying AI-powered tutors that listen as children read, correct mistakes in real time and adapt...
Citizen Historians Are Documenting The Smithsonian Before It Changes
"We came up with this idea to call for volunteers to go out and, in a systematic way, go exhibit by exhibit, room by...
Big Shift: Human Evolution Through Culture Rather Than Genes
Researchers at the University of Maine are theorizing that human beings may be in the midst of a major evolutionary shift—driven not by genes,...
