From the mountains of the moon to the neon paintbrush

Marshall McLuhan was fond of pointing out that new technologies changed not lust those things directly and indirectly related to that technology but all of human culture, and forever. Identifying these changes- never an easy task- was, for McLuhan,the first step towards understanding them. The Neon Paintbrush will first explore the ways in which "looking" has always been different from "seeing" and how "seeing" in turn, helps create visual culture. Using examples from the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, the paper will move on to show the dramatic changes new technologies have brought to visual cultures throughout the world. confirming McLuhan's theory of the relationship between technological and cultural change. Moving on to the present, the paper will explore the changes that the World Wide Web is bringing to visual cultures. It will explore some of the ways the web is altering the way we receive and interpret visual information and will connect these changes to the earlier visual culture of museums. The presentation will conclude by explaining how museum Websites serve as a bridge from one visual culture to another.