The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine

A 1967 New York City Seminar Featuring Marshall McLuhan, Harley Parker, and Museum Professionals

Buch | Softcover

304 Seiten

2026
University of Alberta Press (Verlag)
9781772128277 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Januar 2026)
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A new critical edition of a museum seminar report from 1967, featuring Marshall McLuhan and his collaborator Harley Parker.

This new book recovers an innovative venture in museology from the late 1960s that has largely gone unnoticed. In 1967, media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his collaborator Harley Parker, pioneer of museum exhibit design, were invited by the Museum of the City of New York to moderate a two-day seminar on museum communication attended by leading museum officials from around the state and further afield. The seminar report, originally published in 1969, captures the extent to which the audacious views of McLuhan and Parker on rethinking the museum were greeted with puzzlement, scepticism, and consternation by those in attendance. Drawing on extensive archival sources, William J. Buxton sheds light on the context of the seminar, its main participants and organizers, its funding, and its reception. Also included is an essay on Parker and his close working relationship with McLuhan by Gary Genosko, and another on multi-sensory museology and the overall significance of the seminar today by David Howes. Charting connections to the Our World TV broadcast of June 1967, Expo 67, and the contemporaneous Electric Circus in Manhattan, this exciting work demonstrates the importance of this period of McLuhan’s thought, his collaborations with Parker, and the cluster of work published between 1967 and 1972. The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine makes a unique contribution to McLuhan scholarship, cultural history, and museum history in the late 1960s. With essays by Gary Genosko and David Howes.

William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval.

Acknowledgements
I. Foreword: Beyond Cronyism: Harley Parker’s Role as Museum Exhibit Designer, Collaborator and Stand-In for Marshall McLuhan
Gary Genosko
II. Introduction: Towards a Non-Linear Museum
William J. Buxton
III. Exploration of the Ways, Means, and Values of Museum Communication with the Viewing Public: A Seminar, Museum of the City of New York, 1969
Edited and Annotated by William J. Buxton
IV. Afterword: Multi-Sensory Museology
David Howes
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	6.1.2026
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	400 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Hilfswissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Kommunikationswissenschaft
ISBN-13	9781772128277 / 9781772128277
Zustand	Neuware