Saatchi visit including Newseum

It's quite a while since I was last at the Saatchi Gallery and a recent  e-mail flyer made me realise it was time to make a trip to Sloane Square again.

Newseum

Well it was something I'd not really anticipated but as far as I can tell it was a fairly straightforward (and good) piece of PR for The Times.

Having been reflecting on the distortions and superficiality of the news (via Alain de Botton) this gave another perspective and some sense of the excitement around news in days gone by.

It's easy to decry this establishment organ but the exhibition in fact made me recognise how much The Times had created the quality press in England - The first foreign Correspondent, the use of technology and the exclusives were all well documented with short video clips and documents - It made me think that perhaps the battles with the unions in the 1980s to preserve the paper were for a purpose.

  Some of the tools used by The Times  through the years

One of the things that surprised me most was that at the time of The Kennedy Assassination the paper did not have 'news' on the front page, this in fact didn't happen until 1966.

The front page!

Also the Times had been at the forefront of 'exclusives' since Howard Carter went into Tutankhamen's tomb in 1923 and had scored again with the exclusive of ascent of Everest in 1953.

A very interesting hour or two can be spent at the Newseum  (there's a free broadsheet paper summary of the history too) and it is useful to help us consider how news coverage has changed already and continues to evolve- this is  illustrated by the speed of stories coming in while you look around.
The 'stories' via  Reuters, are updating every few seconds and shown on the dangling mobile phones.

News dangles

 

Also at the Saatchi 

Sam Taylor-Wood the Turner prize winner and now an acclaimed  film director (working on 50 shades of Grey) has contributed some lovely photographic images from Coco Chanel's private apartments - all dark and detailed with no people.

and

I liked the works by Xavier Mascaro which included 5 figures outside (reminded me of a sort of  scrapheap Homage to the Terracotta soldiers)

They were rusty before they encountered the London weather

Inside there were ships (the scale reminded me of the religious homage we saw in Glasgow)

Sailing out .. somewhere

A group of faces

And one alone