What is wrong with Museums in Turkey?

According to the official narrative, the history of Turkish museums goes back to 1846, suggesting a degree of maturity somewhat comparable to similar Western institutions. While there certainly is some truth to this argument, a closer and more critical look reveals the existence of a number of structural weaknesses and biases that still continue to plague Turkish museology. Among these, self-containment, the need to “respond” to the West, and subservience to ideological and political goals are the most blatant, which this talk proposes to discuss through a critical reassessment of Ottoman and Turkish museology.

Edhem Eldem is a professor at the Department of History of Bogaziçi University, Istanbul. He has also taught at Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, EHESS, ENS, and has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His fields of interest include the Levant trade, funerary epigraphy, late-nineteenth-century Istanbul, the Ottoman Bank, Ottoman first-person narratives, Ottoman photography, and the history of archaeology in the Ottoman lands.

Der Schöne-Vortrag ist eine Vortragsreihe zu aktuellen Thesen und Forschungen im Bereich der Museumsgeschichte. Die Veranstaltung beruht auf der Kooperation des Fachgebiets Kunstgeschichte der Moderne und

• der Richard Schöne Gesellschaft für Museumsgeschichte (mehr)
• dem Forum Kunst und Markt (mehr)

Die Vorträge finden jährlich im Herbst an der TU Berlin statt.
Der Eintritt ist frei. Eine Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich.

TU Berlin, Architekturgebäude
Straße des 17. Juni 150/152
10623 Berlin
Hörsaal A 151