Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
What Happens To Our Culture When The Skill Of Handwriting Disappears?
Our mixed feelings about machine-made signatures make plain our broader relationship to handwriting: it offers a glimpse of individuality. Any time spent doing archival...
A “Vibe Shift” In Our Culture? Maybe Not
The term “vibe shift,” which was apparently created by the members of the scene and sort of stolen by journalists and interpreters, is itself...
Are Smart Phones Really Ruining Our Children’s Mental Health?
It’s this imperfect yet fascinatingly complex ultrasocial world that we have thrust our children into. Nearly 20 years on, we are all a bit...
Postmortem: What Brought Down The Pitchfork Festival
The relief Mike Reed expressed came, he said, from witnessing Pitchfork stray from his original vision of a curated weekend of independent music, designed for...
Your Memories — Guided By Your Online Digital Trail
The moments that these photographs recall have no active hold in my memory. Still, upon seeing them—presenting themselves as the definite proof of truth,...
DeepSeek AI Omits Answers About Ai Weiwei And Other Dissident Artists
Responding to a series of questions asked by Hyperallergic about dissident artists, cultural institutions in Taiwan and Tibet, and the destruction of mosques in the Xinjiang...
Simon & Schuster Will Stop Requiring Book Blurbs For Its Books
How often does a blurb from a filmmaker appear on another filmmaker’s movie poster? A blurb from a musician on another musician’s album cover?...
Opera Australia Chief Abruptly Resigns
Her departure comes less than six months after the abrupt exit of artistic director Jo Davies, the first female artistic director in the history...
US Copyright Office Expands Copyright Law To Include AI-Assisted Creation
The Copyright Office said it makes decisions on a case-by-case basis but clarified that it will approach such questions by examining the degree of...
Brands Are Appropriating Our Peak Cultural Moments
There’s something sinister about the way brands keep finding bigger, flashier ways to repurpose great moments in art to sell products. I guess this...
Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art Starts Charging Admission For The First Time
What else can MCA do if its core costs have shot up 20% from 2022 to 2023, and its revenue has not increased at...
The Super-Communication Technologies That Separate Us
The cost-benefit calculation is complicated and nuanced, requiring us to find a course between apocalyptic visions of civilizational decline and the naive utopianism of...
The Former Chicago 7-Eleven That Will Now Dispense Classical Music
The venue, designed by Chicago-based JDJ Architects, will be called the Checkout, a nod to the building’s former life as a 7-Eleven, and doubles...
Spotify Paid A Record $10 Billion To Music Rights Owners In 2024
Spotify’s $10 billion payout figure means that it paid music rightsholders an average of $833 million every month in 2024. - Music Business Worldwide
Paul McCartney And Elton John Protest Proposed Changes To UK Copyright
McCartney told the BBC that the proposed changes could disincentivise writers and artists and result in a “loss of creativity”. - The Guardian
The Small Publishers Shaking Up Africa’s Books Culture
Othuke Ominiabohs started Masobe – which means “let us read” in the Isoko language – in 2018 with a $7,000 (£5,600) loan from his...
Sotheby’s Reports Declined Sales
Sotheby’s auction sales were down 28 percent, to $4.6 billion, from $6.4 billion, but private sales were up 17 percent, climbing from $1.2 billion...
Louvre’s Decision To Move “Mona Lisa”: Misguided?
The decision, dramatically announced by Emmanuel Macron, to move the Mona Lisa to a special hygienically isolated gallery where les idiots who flock to take selfies in...
French Protest Macron’s Stained Glass For Notre Dame
President Emmanuel Macron’s vision to immortalize himself in glass? Replace some windows in the recently reopened Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The custodians of French architecture...
Is This Really A Forgotten Van Gogh?
“People love it when things fall through the cracks, and it would be wonderful if they found a Van Gogh—but they’ve got to pin...
Want To Understand Good Poetry? Study The Bad Stuff
Much can be learned by close reading poetry, which is well written, that has withstood the test of time. By reading bad poetry, however,...
“Hamlet” And “Grand Theft Auto.” Okay.
A film about a performance of “Hamlet” within the world of Grand Theft Auto suggests that the moral environment of revenge tragedy is not...
Will The Smithsonian Have To Obey Trump’s Anti-DEI Orders?
The Smithsonian, which oversees 21 museums, including ones dedicated to American art, portraiture, and African American history and culture, has a unique structure. That...
Leaked Memo: The Damage Overcrowding Is Doing To The Louvre
There is a “proliferation of damage in museum spaces, some of which are in very poor condition,” Des Cars wrote in the memo, which was...
Spotify: The Aural Drug That Flattens Music
As its playlists became increasingly dominated by music from content farms—low-wage operations producing dreck for somebody else’s profit—these mood classifications turned into what Ms....
