Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Top Archaeology Stories Of 2024
From sexy frescoes emerging from the ashes to hidden cities surfacing due to Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scans, archaeologists continue to make discoveries...
The “Unphilosophical” Life?
Thinking hard makes sense if you want answers; it makes less sense if the highest reward you anticipate from your intellectual efforts is surprise....
Why Are We So Fascinated With Our Own Demise?
Young people today are no less obsessed with climate disasters than Gen X was with nuclear war. Where we had nightmares about missiles, theirs...
What Accounts For Those New Year’s Music Traditions?
For old time’s sake, we sing “Auld Lang Syne.” We embrace the waltz to remember and ward off depression. Everywhere in the world there...
The Literary Jimmy Carter
Publishing 32 books over the course of his life, he wasn’t simply prolific, as far as former presidents go. His output also displayed an...
What Caused Deterioration Of Maria Callas’ Voice?
In recent years, a study quantified the audible differences between her recordings of Tosca and Nabucco, a decade apart. They found that she had become increasingly...
Why Teachers Are Leaving The Profession
Individual teachers, school boards, and think tanks are attempting to find ways to improve teachers’ working conditions so as to combat burnout, proposing a...
How History Has Become “Post-Literate”
It is now difficult to imagine the mass of general readers—assuming they exist—being reached even by a historian of genius. Historiography is becoming stuck....
How Shen Yun Dance Made $266 Million
By the end of last year, tax records show, it had more than a quarter of a billion dollars, stockpiling wealth at a pace...
Jimmy Carter On Arts And Culture:
"We have no ministry of culture in this country, and I hope we never will. No matter how democratic a government may be, no...
Charles Dolan, Media Pioneer, HBO Founder, 98
Charles Dolan was one of the cable TV industry’s most aggressive operators and marketers. He created the nation’s first urban cable television network, Manhattan...
2024 Was Supposed To Be Break Dancing’s Breakout Year. It Didn’t Happen
“We’re making the same mistakes in our culture. We’re allowing the appropriation, the exportation. We’re trying to fix it for everybody else except for...
The Pianos Nobody Wants
"I would say that the era for old uprights is coming to a close. The inevitability is that one day, those pianos will be...
The Impressionistic Bob Dylan Biopic
“The movie is full of things that didn’t happen, but the way they happen in those scenes feels right to me." - The Guardian
ARTnews Picks The Defining Artworks Of 2024
A bias toward contemporary art has pervaded museums across the globe for decades now, but as this year proved, work from past eras can...
How Much Does Our Language Shape The Ways We Think?
Many researchers find another reason to worry about the spread of English: the prospect of cognitive hegemony. Languages, they argue, influence how we perceive...
America’s Elite Education Problem
Elite education has lost the trust of many Americans, in no small part because of how it solidifies the advantages of wealth. The fact...
Where We Went Wrong: Effort As The Goal Rather Than Accomplishment
The problem is that we’ve taken the practice of celebrating industriousness too far. We’ve gone from commending effort to treating it as an end in...
Of Course AI Won’t Replace Human Creativity. We’ve Been Struggling To Define Genius For...
Culture dictates human action far more than individual humans dictate cultural production. To understand great works of art as human achievements is just as...
People Won’t Listen To Facts. Our Information Economy Has Overwhelmed Us
No amount of evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way or the other. We can attribute some of...
The Replica Shop: Paris Atelier Makes Exacting Reproductions Of Some Of The World’s Most...
The atelier’s commissions have included replacing a third of Versailles’s garden statues with copies created from marble-dust resin and supplying Jeff Koons with five...
Eight Ways Artists Have Incorporated AI Into Their Work
A Ditto Music survey of over 1,200 artists found that nearly 60% use AI in their projects. Tools like AIVA generate compositions based on specific parameters, replicating...
How Hollywood’s Struggles Are Impacting LA’s Economy
When the strikes ended, workers in Hollywood hoped their schedules would finally fill up again. But for many people, things only got worse. -...
Apply Now: Canada’s National Arts Centre Mentorship Program
Play in section with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra: June 12 to July 1, 2025
Research: How Walmart Impoverishes Communities
On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all....