Adam Lauder is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. He has contributed articles to journals including Canadian Journal of Communication, Future Anterior, Technoetic Arts, The Journal of Canadian Art History and TOPIA. Lauder has also contributed features to magazines including Border Crossings, C, Canadian Art, Hunter and Cook and Millions. He was guest curator of the museum exhibitions It’s Alive! Bertram Brooker and Vitalism (2009-11) and Imaging Disaster (with Cassandra Getty, 2013).
Authors | Adam Lauder
Articles on Amodern by Adam Lauder
A CLASH OF SPACES
Harley Parker’s Reconceptualization of the Museum as a Communication System
The innovative exhibition designs of Harley Parker (1915-1992), who served as Head of Design and Installations at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum from 1957 to 1967, have been consistently overshadowed by his association with Marshall McLuhan, with whom he collaborated on two book projects. This article reassesses Parker’s experimental ROM installations as well as his visionary descriptions of the museum as a communication system. Challenging Alexander Nagel’s reading of Parker’s Hall of Fossil Invertebrates as an application of McLuhan’s ideas, this reexamination will draw attention to the irreducibly dialogical nature McLuhan and Parker’s exchange as well as the exhibition designer’s previously overlooked impact on contemporary artists such as IAIN BAXTER& and the era-defining 1970 MoMA exhibition INFORMATION.