The Museum of Innocence, Istanbul

"A museum should not just be a place for fancy paintings but should be a place where we can communicate our lives through our everyday objects. "
- Orhan Pamuk

This morning, ignoring, as much as we could, the constant, heavy icy cold rain, together with three colleagues and twenty four residential students, we visited The Museum of Innocence in Beyoğlu district of Istanbul.  What an extraordinary, thought provoking experience, this exquisite art installation that is so much more than a museum collection of artefacts and memories. 

Adapted from the museum's guidebook:
'The Museum of Innocence' by Orhan Pamuk, is a novel set in Istanbul between 1974 and early 2000s, and tells the story of Istanbul life from 1950-2000 through flashbacks and memories of two families, one wealthy, the other middle class.  For eight years, Kemal continues to visit his beloved, Füsun, and after every visit takes away some object that reminds him of her. These objects form the collection of the Museum of Innocence. The objects relate to daily life in Istanbul in the second half of the C20th, the display cabinets correspond to chapters from the novel, with the same number and title as the relevant chapter.  Pamuk conceived of the novel and the museum simultaneously in the 1990's. The novel was published in 2008, and the museum opened in 2012.  

Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature and graduate of Robert College !!