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THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE
The Museum of Innocence, created by Orhan Pamuk, is a small museum of Istanbul made up of carefully assembled installations which describes the memories and meanings associated with the objects from daily life described in the author's eponymous novel. Pamuk conceived of the novel and the museum simultaneously from the very beginning, in the 1990s. The novel was published in 2008, while the museum opened in 2012. The Museum Of Innocence is both the museum of a fiction, and a little museum of "Istanbul Life" in the second half of the 20th century. A view of the floor of the Museum of Innocence. The sequence of boxes begins on the far wall across the stairwell with Box 2, “The Sanzelize Boutique,” and continues chapter by chapter along the wall at right. Visible in the image are Box 68, “4,213 Cigarette Stubs” (on the rear wall of the entrance hall on the floor below), and Box 73, “Füsun’s Driver’s License” (at the top of the stairs on the museum’s floor).
Set between 1974 and the early 2000s, the novel The Museum of Innocence tells the story of Istanbul life from 1950 to 2000, through memories and flashbacks concerning the lives of two families, one wealthy, the other middle class.Kemal, who is from a wealthy Nişantaşı family, is due to marry Sibel, a girl from his own social class, when he falls in love with his distant relative Füsun, who works as a sales assistant in a shop. They begin to meet in dusty rooms filled with old furniture and memories.After Füsun marries someone else, Kemal spends eight years visiting her in this building, now transformed into a museum. After every visit, he takes away with him an object, which reminds him of Füsun. These objects form the collection of the Museum of Innocence.
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The museum’s entrance hall. Inscribed on the floor is the time spiral that the novel develops; symbolizing
Aristotelian ideas about time as a line that connects indivisible moments. Objects, like atoms, are carried through to the clocks exhibited in the central stairwell that comprise Box 54, “Time.” Each object in the museum, whether a saltshaker or a cigarette butt, helps us remember the moments, converting time into space.
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There are exhibits on four of the museum building's five floors. Each of these four floors contains display cabinets corresponding to chapters from the novel, and carrying the same number and title as the relevant chapter. The boxes are displayed in the same order as the chapters, except for box number 68, entitled '4213 Cigarette Stubs', which is the biggest piece in the museum and is thus displayed at the entrance.The top floor, where Kemal Basmaci lived from 2000 to 2007 while the museum was being built, contains pages from Orhan Pamuk's manuscript of the novel, as well as his preliminary sketches for the boxes he created for each chapter.
27. Don't Lean Back That Way, You Might FallThe Museum of Innocence
27.
Don’t
Lean Back That Way, You Might Fall
We
settled down for a picnic on a meadow looking out at the view painted in this
Antoine Ignace Melling (1763-1831) landscape. I exhibit the thermos filled with
tea, stuffed grape leaves, boiled eggs and some Meltem bottles to evoke our
Sunday excursion that may offer the visitor some relief from the oppressive
succession of interior settings, as well as my own agony. But neither the
reader nor the visitor should on any account think that I could forget my pain
even for an instant.
27. DON'T LEAN BACK THAT WAY, YOU MIGHT FALL
47. My Father's DeathThe Museum of Innocence
47. My
Father’s Death
Every man’s death begins with the death of his father. My father’s death had turned
all the familiar props of my childhood into objects of immeasurable value, each
one the vessel of a lost past.
47. MY FATHER'S DEATH
15. A Few Unpalatable Anthropological TruthsThe Museum of Innocence
15. A Few Unpalatable
Anthropological Truths
In those days, even
in Istanbul’s most affluent Westernized circles, a young girl who ‘gave
herself’ to a man before marriage could still expect to be judged harshly and
face serious consequences: If a man tried to avoid marrying the girl, and the
girl in question was under eighteen years of age, an angry father might take
the philanderer to court to force him to marry her. It was the custom for
newspapers to run photographs with black bands over the “violated” girls’ eyes.
Because the press used the same device in photographs of adulteresses, rape
victims, and prostitutes, the photographs of women with black bands over their
eyes were so numerous that reading a Turkish newspaper in those days was like
wandering through a masquerade.
15. A Few Unpalatable Anthropological Truths
51. Happiness Means Being Close to the One You Love, That's AllThe Museum of Innocence
51.
Happiness
Means Being Close to the One You Love, That’s All
The mementos preserve the colors, textures, and delights as they were more faithfully, in fact, than can those who accompanied us through those moments.
51. Happiness Means Being Close to the One You Love, That’s All
40. The Consolations of Life in a YaliThe Museum of Innocence
40. The
Consolations of Life in a Yalı
Yalıs are the most distinctive manifestations
of what the melancholic, nostalgic writer Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar termed ‘Bosphorus civilization’; this portrait of my recollections from yalı life – the
boathouses and rowing trips, the high ceilings, the enormous ships sailing so
close by that it seemed as if they were passing through the living room,
fishing on the shore, the food and fried mackerel on the table – is inspired by
memories of 16th- 17th century Dutch still-life painting.
40. The Consolations of Life in a Yalı
29. By Now There Was Hardly a Moment When I Wasn't Thinking About Her 29. By Now There Was Hardly a Moment When I Wasn't Thinking About HerThe Museum of Innocence
29. By
Now There Was Hardly a Moment When I Wasn’t Thinking About Her
It
has always been an aspect of human condition to unwittingly make connections,
knowing full well that none exists, between a thought that suddenly crosses our
minds, or an undefined turbulence in our soul, and something that we might
notice happening around us at that very moment. Aristotle outlines his thoughts
on this topic, later shared by Al-Farabi, in book 12 of the Metaphysics, where
he discusses his famous theory of active intellect. For example, if we were
traversed with an angry, hateful thought and saw, at that very moment, a bolt
of lighting hitting a faraway sea, we would imagine our fury and the lighting
bolt to be somehow connected. If we’re staring at the ceiling in a dark room
during a power cut, lost in our thoughts, and the lamps suddenly come back on,
our mind, or perhaps our imagination, will connect the light with whatever we
are thinking of at that moment – like the memory of a childhood vaccination,
for instance. The famous columnist Celal Salik, when writing about seeing
double features at the cinema, said that whenever he felt any sort of disquiet,
the film reel would snap at the same time. Ahmet Işıkçı, whom we know through his metaphysical drawings, says
that Kemal’s thoughts and the intensity of his heartache have set fire to this
tree.
29. By Now There Was Hardly a Moment When I Wasn’t Thinking About Her
25. The Agony of WaitingThe Museum of Innocence
25. The Agony Of Waiting
In poetically well built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects we love, but losing all sense of Time. Real museums are places where time is transformed into Space.
25. The Agony Of Waiting
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The Museum of Innocence is based on the assumption that objects used for different purposes and evocative of the most disparate memories can, when placed side by side, bring forth unprecedented thoughts and emotions.
Masumiyet Müzesi - The Museum Of Innocence
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