Charlotte Higgins

An antidote for terminal boredom

Seeing an attractive art exhibition at an airport sets Charlotte Higgins wondering what other mundane public space would benefit from a bit of cultural diversion.

Going underground... Artwork by Damien Hirst being displayed as part of Art Tube, a 2001 Platform for Art initiative. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA

I have spent a lot of time in airports recently, which varied in atmosphere from not bad at all to bearing an uncanny resemblance to Dante's descriptions of Inferno (I refer to Heathrow, of course).

The only airport I have visited that is actually civilised is San Francisco - it contains, unbelievably, both a library (devoted to aviation history) and a whole series of exhibition spaces.

Arriving at the airport ridiculously early because of the security scares, I ended up having acres of time, and caught a really attractive display called Made in China, about 20th-century products and packaging: social realist rice bowls, kitsch radios, ceramic Mao busts, pulp fiction paperbacks.

I must say that seeing an exhibition at an airport is not, to me, a particularly enticing idea; but this caught me up as I was wandering towards passport control and I passed a pleasant half-hour that might otherwise have been spent buying duty-free out of mild boredom.

Where else do we need to find a bit of cultural diversion? Platform for Art, the London Underground's public art programme, is really good; Boston rail station recently hosted an artwork telling commuters how racist they are; and hospitals are increasingly putting on interesting art programmes. What about the office? The gym? The bus stop? The post office?

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