It could come as a shock that London’s Nationwide Gallery proudly unveiled a smoking room solely 50 years in the past. Aside from the well being hazard, it was positioned near the galleries, which home a few of the world’s best work. In 1975, when the room was opened, the gallery’s annual report heralded it as a “much-needed facility” the place “smoking is allowed, the place guests can merely pause, sit and be comfy”. {A photograph} within the report exhibits Betty Churchyard, then the gallery’s head of images, clutching a cigarette, her packet and matches artfully positioned on the ground. Subsequent to her is the gallery’s press officer, Phyllis Rowlands. What occurred to the smoking room? It was closed a long time in the past—smoking in public locations was banned in 2007—however the area has now been taken over as a part of the Roden Centre for Inventive Studying, which opened in February. And fortunately the whiff of stale tobacco has lengthy gone.
