Marshall McLuhan, the sometimes confounding and increasingly relevant media theorist who spent most of his career at U of T’s St. Michael’s College, will be recognized in a new exhibition opening this evening at the university.

A mural created in 1969 by McLuhan’s friend, the artist René Cera, will be unveiled at the college’s Canada Room. The campus will be the new permanent home of “Pied Pipers All,” a visual representation of McLuhan’s writings.

The Edmonton-born intellectual is known for maxims such as “the medium is the message,” for coining the term “global village,” and for predicting the world wide web.

The college is also launching a multimedia exhibition on the media guru, called “McLuhan on Campus: Local Inspirations, Global Visions,” that looks at his intellectual development in the context of his academic life at St. Michael’s.

Members of the McLuhan family will attend the unveiling, which will be followed by a lecture by Paul Elie, a senior fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. The talk is called “The Makings of a Spirituality of Technology: Glenn Gould, Marshall McLuhan, and ‘Electronic Participation.'”

The unveiling takes place at 5:30 p.m. at 81 St. Mary St., followed by the lecture. The exhibition will open at 7 p.m. at the library at 113 Joseph St.

To help put you in the mood, here’s where McLuhan saves Alvy Singer from an insufferable pedant in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall:

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And for the sentimentalists, a Heritage Minute:

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