Television and Civilization: Watching TV: Historic Televisions and Memorabilia from the MZTV Museum opens at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
November 7, 1996, Hull, Quebec - Smoke and mirrors. The idiot box. A vast wasteland. A medium with a message. For nearly four generations, television has been all this and more, as showcased in the new exhibition, Watching TV: Historic Televisions and Memorabilia from the MZTV Museum, opening November 8, 1996 at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Watching TV takes visitors on a tour of television's sometimes bumpy history, from the technology that made television possible, to its current influence on the Information Highway.
Adapted from an exhibition recently presented at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, Watching TV offers visitors a look at television and its place in their lives. How has television affected us as individuals and as a society? How has human history been altered through the influence of television? What lies ahead for television as a medium of expression and a mirror on our world?
"Most visitors think of the Canadian Museum of Civilization as a place to see historical artifacts from ancient cultures and discrete societies," says Dr. George MacDonald, President and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation. "Watching TV offers visitors a new take on what this museum is all about, allowing us to explore the influence of technology on culture, and vice versa, and enabling us to study the effects of a global communications phenomenon on the development of human civilization."
Watching TV illustrates the historical development of television, primarily through the MZTV Museum's important collection of historical television sets and related memorabilia. The sixty archival television sets featured in the exhibition are truly remarkable, presenting a stunning array of television technology from the 1920s through to the 1970s.
In addition to the television sets and related memorabilia, the exhibition also examines where television may be headed. As Marshall McLuhan once said, new technologies build on the technologies they supersede. In Watching TV, visitors will see how television technology and programming have influenced the character of the Information Highway, advertising, and other communications phenomena of our time.
Central to the exhibition's content is the notion that television - contrary to what critics often charge - is not an intellectual and cultural wasteland, but a vibrant medium of cultural expression. It is a medium which has changed as the world around it has changed, metamorphosing and adapting to its surrounding reality.
"It is fascinating to see through this exhibition how technology and culture have influenced each other," says MacDonald. "The Canadian Museum of Civilization is known for its exhibitions of artifacts which range in age from thousands of years to a few months. Watching TV presents the cultural icons of the new kid on the block - a new kid that has become the most venerable communicator of the twentieth century."
Television has touched the lives of almost everyone on earth. Without television, world civilization would be vastly different than it is today. For good or ill, even if we never watch it ourselves, television has changed our lives to an unimaginable extent. For a taste of how television has accomplished perhaps the single biggest revolution in human society since the Second World War, we invite you to visit Watching TV, beginning November 8, 1996 in the Arts and Traditions Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Watching TV at the Canadian Museum of Civilization - showing you where civilization is going, and not just where it's been.
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