The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul

Anna Chiara Cimoli (Polimi) visited the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul. Opened in April 2012 and born in parallel with the homonymous novel by Orhan Pamuk (2008), it is much more than a literary museum: it’s rather an amazing display of objects that tell the story of the two protagonists of the novel, Kemal and his beloved Füsun, of their replationship, and through them that of Istanbul in the 70ies-80ies (the novel ends in the early ‘00s).
The house itself – bought by the author while writing the novel in order to host the museum – is supposed to be the house where Füsun’s family lived, and where Kemal spent his last years (at the upper floor we can see its bedroom). This is the only reconstruction: all the other spaces are occupied by elegant showcases in which the objects (shoes, advertisements, pictures, cigarettes, press clippings, food boxes…) are displayed in very poetic forms.
What emerges out of the display cases, put side by side following the chapters of the novel and bearing the same titles, is an intense and very personal tribute to the city and its contradictions, social schemes, atmospheres. That sung by Pamuk is the wealthy Istanbul bourgeoisie, that of Nişantaşi neighborhood, of the cafés by the Bosphorus, of the parties in the European fashion, and its frictions with the lower middle-class (whom Füsun is a member of), that of historical neighborhoods like that of Çukurkuma, where the museum is placed.
Very little texts accompany the visit: without having read the book, it is very difficult to follow and recognize the sense of the objects’ series and of the energy they express when put together in the cases. But if you have read it, you’re rewarded: first because the book is in itself the museum’s ticket (a stamp in the shape of Füsun’s earring is put on a page); then because the magic and the poetry of the narration, the charm of the objects, the accuracy of the historical research, and most of all the sentimental strength of the story invade the space. It is a museum about time, the way its perception changes in regard of one’s mood, about nostalgia: many clocks and watches are displayed all over. It’s a museum about the sense of collecting, too.
The beautiful museum’s catalogue, The innocence of objects, for the moment exists only in Turkish, but it will soon be translated in other languages.