Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine

The Museum as Large-Room Pinball Machine

Buxton, William J.

Paperback

General ReferenceGeneral ArtGeneral Design

ISBN10: 1772128279
ISBN13: 9781772128277
Publisher: University of Alberta Press
Published: Feb 17 2026
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.88 Width: 5.99 Depth: 8.91
Language: English

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.

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