I’ve been glued to CNN’s Haiti coverage in recent days but forced myself to take a break and hit a couple of new-ish exhibits at the Newseum this weekend. I don’t often visit–at $20 a pop, it’s the most expensive museum ticket in town–but two installations, Inside Tim Russert’s Office: If It’s Sunday, It’s Meet the Press, and Athlete: The Sports Illustrated Photography of Walter Iooss, turned out to be worth my once-a-year tour of the place.
Though I think NBC went overboard in its non-stop memorializing of Tim Russert when he died in June 2008, the Newseum’s recreation of the newsman’s office is a poignant remembrance of a guy who lived and breathed politics. Of special interest: the white board on which Russert wrote “Florida ! Florida ! Florida !” during the Bush-Gore election debacle; the baseballs he kept in his desk awaiting the next Meet the Press guest’s signature; and Russert’s reading glasses, strewn on a pile of papers just as left them the day he collapsed at his office, a sad reminder that he was struck down in his prime.
Walter Iooss’s photographs are also recommended, sports fan or not. There are shots of the greats–Michael Jordan, Arnold Palmer, Mohammed Ali–but the most compelling images are of kids, enjoying sport for fun. I especially loved the shot of a group of kids playing stickball on a street corner in Cuba– it nicely conveys the joy and freedom of childhood summers– and one of several Brazilian boys bracing for a direct kick in a soccer game. You can feel their fear.
Interestingly, Iooss notes he had a hard time shooting Tiger Woods, who is shown stepping up to the tee, and was scolded by Woods’ caddy for overstepping his bounds.
“Getting close to Tiger is a problem,” Iooss writes.
Right. In more ways than one.
The Newseum is good for a few moments of irony at least, but I couldn’t escape the news of the day.
On my way out, I stopped at the museum’s Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery (one of my favorites) and stumbled on a 2008 photo of a mud-caked Haitian boy pushing a stroller through debris left by Tropical Storm Hanna.
The Miami Herald photographer who snapped it said he wondered if Haiti would recover from the series of storms and hurricanes that hit that year. “It made you ask, Why?,” he writes next to the photo.
No answer forthcoming.
Inside Tim Russert’s Office runs through December 31, 2010; Athlete runs through January 16, 2011.
Photo: Patrick Farrell, The Miami Herald
