Sat
19-Feb-2005

design museum

Matt and I went to the Design Museum down by Tower Bridge today to see the Designing the Twentieth Century exhibition. This characterised each decade of the twentieth century as dominated by new developments and design in various areas of life, such as the home, travel, nightlife, and so on. All kinds of design classics were represented there, including an interesting display of the covers of Penguin books, from the original ten orange prints through to more recent series.

There was also a very good exhibition on the history of information design, with all kinds of stuff on show, from poverty maps of nineteenth century London to Buckminster Fuller's map of the globe to an upside down road map of Britain. Everything is so beautifully presented in the Design Museum that you emerge feeling like you should be living in Stockholm. Life just looks untidy for a few hours.

Sat
28-Feb-2004

1920s exhibition

Matt and I met Anna for lunch today near St Pauls before the three of us sauntered over to the Museum of London for another heady dose of the 1920s. The exhibition is called 'The 1920s: the decade that changed London' and it is really rather enjoyable.

As a quote from the exhibition says: 'No notion was too cranky to voice, no experiment too eccentric to try. 1920s London shimmered with the nerves of the world.'

It all conveys the new internationalism of the times very well. There was exuberant, though contested, cultural diversity. Jazz, cocktails, crazy dancing and informal manners came over from America. You had this interesting Russian theme with ballet and Bolshevism. And the internationally focused, Western educated citizens of Britain's overseas empire were issuing challenges to the assumptions of British colonial imperialism, particularly individuals from Ireland and India.