Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
The Oscars Have Contorted Themselves Into An Unwatchable Mess
Just as tentpole movies are tested and managed to death, the Oscars have bent themselves into contortions to meet what executives have determined that...
How Cities Are Developing Policies To Promote Support For Musicians
As the cost of living continues to skyrocket and spaces for musicians to perform become fewer, some say municipal music strategies are becoming increasingly important. A...
I’m A Professor. Now I’ve Become An AI-Cheat Detective
To judge by the number of papers I read last semester that were clearly AI generated, a lot of students are enthusiastic about this...
UK Is Increasing Arts Funding. But The Arguments For Where That Funding Goes Are...
Even beyond their economic potential, the cultural value of practices more traditionally associated with commercial activity has become more central to the national conversation....
The Dangerous Notion Of Free Speech
Freedom of expression undermines authority, which is why it has no place in societies wholly based on the exercise of coercive power. The logic...
Is This Rubens Real? It’s Difficult To Tell
This is not the first time that claims against the authenticity of Samson and Delilah have made headlines. In 2021, the Swiss tech start-up Art Recognition...
What Cuts To Federal Funding (Small As It Is) For Public Radio Stations Means
Every nickel we get we use it to provide public service to the community. So what that 10% means is that we would have...
How Do We Make Culture Visible? Who Controls Visibility?
Visibility is only part of the equation. Who controls it? How are cultural narratives shaped? What systems determine access? If we don’t ask these...
French Cinema Sees A Surge Of Patrons Returning To Theatres
In France, there has been a more celebratory feeling of late, with fresh statistics suggesting that its audiences are leading the way in returning...
Concert Tickets Have Become Eye-Poppingly Expensive. Fans Are Struggling
In recent years, concertgoers have paid eye-popping prices for tickets to see popular artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Oasis on tour. But Gen Z fans...
Against The Encroachment Of AI On Creativity
The Brutalist’s AI touch-up fits the broader culture’s fetishization of perfection and flattening, but image filters and technologies like Auto-Tune consciously draw attention to...
The New Cultural Critique: Anti-Fans
Anti-fans, as pop-culture scholars have termed them, are similar to hate-watchers: consumers who become fixated on what frustrates them. Both groups tend to target something...
Our Times Can Be Understood As A New Kind Of Cultural Revolution
Unlike the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, which imposed ideology on their populaces by means of culture and entertainment, America’s current reality is...
The Curious Case Of Francis Bacon’s Friend Barry
For over a decade before that spring day in 1992, Barry Joule, a Canadian handyman with a rock-star mane, had been one of Bacon’s...
Delayed George Lucas Museum’s CEO To Step Down
Jackson-Dumont’s departure comes just months after the museum quietly delayed its opening from this year to 2026. The museum has now delayed its opening...
America’s Oldest University Is Threatened. Can It Survive?
Harvard is the flagship of American higher education ...and what started as a crisis of speech and authority on campus has grown into a...
The Main Oscars Message? Hollywood Is Afraid
I feel for public figures in a way: damned if they do, damned if they don’t. After Sunday night, the film industry looks craven...
The New Rationalism Versus The Humanities
In many ways, rationalism is the result of people with STEM educations attempting to tackle questions that had long been the purview of the...
Canada’s Quiet, Efficient System Of Book-Banning
Not all these phenomena constitute “banning” per se, but they all fall under what we might call the new “censorship consensus,” in which books...
This Year’s Oscars Show The Hollywood Dream Still Lives
If there is something that unites “Anora” and “The Brutalist,” in terms both of onscreen story and behind-the-scenes process, it’s a masterful dedication to...
New Zealand University Students Protest Decision To Use AI To Replace Traditional Lecture Slides
Three AI programs are set to replace lecture slides in the University of Auckland’s Digital Marketing 304 class when the first semester of the year...
It’s Expensive To Make Culture. We’re Falling Behind
"We’ve now seen years and years of austerity, and it’s not just the arts that have taken a hit – it’s anything that sits...
We’ve Gotten Into A Zero-Sum Mindset. It’s Dangerous
This is what’s called zero-sum thinking — the belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for...
Worries About This Year’s Oscars TV Ratings
In the run-up to the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, worries about the size of the TV audience have rumbled through the movie capital....
Ditching The Ballet Tights As A Radical Act
The decision to forgo tights was the culmination of a conversation about equity and inclusion that began at the National Ballet in 2020. -...
