Harley Parker: The McLuhan of the Museum

This is the first book about the life and work of Harley Parker (1915-1992), Canadian museum exhibition designer, typographer, and painter. As friend and collaborator of media luminary Marshall McLuhan, Parker’s influence extended far beyond the realm of art. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Genosko shows that Parker’s unique perspective on museums is based on his application of McLuhan’s medium theory to exhibition design. His emphasis on the role of the senses anticipated much of contemporary sensory studies, which will bring his work into focus for a new generation of scholars. A highlight of Parker’s career as Head of General Display at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (1957-1968) was his Hall of Invertebrate Fossils, which opened to considerable acclaim in early 1967. That same year he mounted a multimedia gallery at the Museum of the City of New York. These milestones underscore Parker’s profound impact on museum studies and communication theory. Central to this comprehensive study is the rediscovery of Parker’s lost manuscript, The Culture Box, which would have confirmed his role as a central figure in the Toronto School of Communication had it not been lost for some fifty years. Scholars in communication, cultural, and museum studies will benefit from this exploration of Parker’s thought, as will those interested in sensory studies and the enduring value of McLuhan’s ideas.

Gary Genosko is Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University. He has published extensively on Continental thought, communication modelling, administrative surveillance, critical semiotics, and the lives of scholarly journals. His books include McLuhan and Baudrillard: The Masters of Implosion and When Technocultures Collide. He also edited a critical edition of Harley Parker’s The Culture Box (with University of Alberta Press).