ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Douglas McLennan

Douglas McLennan
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Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal

The Small Publisher Making Its Mark With Translations No One Was Paying Attention To

Since its founding a decade ago, Tilted Axis has gained a reputation for bringing out a wide range of groundbreaking, genre-defying literature in translation....

Are Things Really Better In The Music Business?

There’s never been a better time in history to be an intermediary, a middleman, a hanger-on, an aggregator, a shyster. For a guitarist or...

Lebrecht Wonders: Is It Okay To Review A Performance By A Musician Accused Of...

I cannot recall a recording of Le Rossignol that gave more tingle to my ears. So am I allowed to recommend it here without...

How Professional Licensing Has Warped American Culture

The institution of professional licensing has only grown in its reach and outlandishness. More and more new professions are becoming licensed, such as art therapists...

Kennicott: Can Trump Destroy The Kennedy Center?

Or will he use it in the usual way that authoritarians have used the arts in the past, as a vehicle for Trumpian...

Anne Midgette: The Kennedy Center Putsch

Even a president as attuned to the details of Kennedy Center programming as Nixon didn’t try to directly take a hand in running the...

How To bridge Humanities And Science? Try Math

We must recognise that the natural and the mental order of things go hand in hand. Neither can be fully understood without the other....

Australia’s Venice Biennale Scandal

Events have moved quickly since Thursday night when Creative Australia sensationally dumped the Sydney-based multimedia artist Khaled Sabsabi as the nation’s representative for the 2026 edition...

The Trump Threat To Academic Research and Publication

Pressures from the Trump administration threaten an already beleaguered research enterprise that historically has thrived on doing basic research with minimal influence from partisan politics and...

An Important New Definition Of Fair Use In The AI World

In 2020, Thomson Reuters sued Ross Intelligence for copyright infringement, alleging that Ross had scraped Thomson Reuters’ own law database, known as Westlaw, to create its database,...

The House In LA Where Music History Burned

Before it burned, Charlie Springer’s house contained 18,000 vinyl LPs, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45s, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78s, 150 8-tracks, hundreds of signed musical...

The New Pianos That Play Better Than Anyone

Recent years have seen a surge in options for physical customization of the piano and an enormous leap forward in the merging of acoustic...

A Look At New Visions For The British Museum

The problem is that this was really an ideas competition, with entrants expected to produce not detailed designs but rather a flavour of what...

FCC Commissioner Sics Investigation Of Comcast Over Diversity

The FCC's Brendan Carr this week leaked word to right wing propaganda mill Newsmax that he’s tasked the FCC’s enforcement bureau with launching an investigation into...

Florida Lawmakers Debate Restoring Arts Funding DeSantis Cut

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ $32 million line-item vetoes stripped away funding for local theater groups, arts festivals, museums and more, sparking outrage in Florida last year. Now, a...

Want To Accomplish Big Things? Here’s How Scientists Made The Moon A Destination

It can be easy to take our maps, images and story of the Moon for granted. But over the past six decades, our cultural...

The Book Blurb Announcements, Explained

One big author and one major publisher announced within weeks of each other that they were through with the practice of blurbs, and the...

Spotify’s Illusion Of Music Discovery And Choice

You may not agree with Mood Machine that Spotify’s mixes are an existential threat to the way people discover music, but you may marvel at how...

How Trump’s Tariffs Will Disrupt The Art Market

“If you’re spending 10 million on a work of art and you’re paying $1 million or $2 million, or even $2.5 million in tariffs because it was imported,...

Chappell Roan’s Grammy Speech For Helping Artists Was… Naive

Roan gets respect and true appreciation for her artistry and gumption but is far too green and too uninformed to be the agent of...

The Real Problem With Trump’s Edict About Building Classical Buildings

Like its 2020 predecessor, the new order has little to do with classical architecture in any meaningful way—which itself has been decontextualized from its...

Romance Fiction Is Hot. Here’s How It Works

According to Leah Koch, just two things make a romance novel: a central love story and a happy ending. “A criticism I hear a...

Arts Organizations Have Heavily Invested In DEI Initiatives. Will New NEA Rules Lock Them...

The new N.E.A. rules require applicants to agree not to operate diversity programs “that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws” and call on grant applicants...

Study: Reliance On AI May Erode Critical Thinking Skills

“The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight when using GenAI,” the researchers wrote....

Reuters Wins First Copyright Lawsuit Over AI

In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’...
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