CUAG: Seeing, Selling and Situating Radio in Canada, 1922-1956

Curated by Michael Windover and Anna F. MacLennan

Radio didn’t just arrive in Canadian living rooms in the 1920s. A visual and material culture attended the new, electronic medium, with advertisements shaping perceptions of it and radio consoles themselves becoming focal points in interior design schemes. Over time, the form of radio cabinets changed to meet (and even challenge) domestic realities, and the new medium became a conduit for modern design in some cases. By the time television emerged in the 1950s, radio was ubiquitous, and a crucial part of everyday life in Canada.

The exhibition in Discovery Centre (4^th floor in the MacOdrum Library) and the Carleton University Art Gallery (St. Patrick’s Building) explores representations of radio to show how manufacturers and advertisers sold the idea of listening to the wireless.  The exhibits in the Discovery Centre display aspects of radio’s visual and material culture from the early 1920s to the mid-1950s. “Making Radio Space in 1930s Canada,” the exhibition at the Carleton University Art Gallery (27 February to 7 May), focuses on how radio affected conceptions of space.