Exhibits from the Museum of Innocence, the award-winning Istanbul-based museum created by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk in 2012, will go on show early next year at Somerset House in London as part of a special display. The Museum of Innocence is based on the author's 2008 novel of the same name, a love story in which the narrator Kemal collects numerous items owned by his cousin Füsun.
The museum, which was named the 2014 European Museum of the Year, houses 83 wooden boxes related to the book’s 83 chapters. Each box is filled with items—both ready-made pieces and commissioned works of art—that reflect every chapter, thereby covering a 30-year period in the history of modern Istanbul from 1975 when the novel begins.
The Museum of Innocence is, meanwhile, the focus of a major documentary feature that premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month. Pamuk was involved in the making of the 95-minute film, Innocence of Memories: Orhan Pamuk’s Museum and Istanbul, which is directed by the UK film-maker Grant Gee.
The documentary brings to life Pamuk’s museum, which is located in the Beyoglu district of the city. Pamuk has written the narration for the film which is relayed by a childhood friend of Füsun, the novel’s lead female character.
The film also touches upon recent political developments in Turkey. “A city, if you live in it for 63 years like me, turns into a sort of index for everything pointing to our memories. But once these monuments and trees begin to be destroyed we feel first of all not a political but a very personal energy and anger to preserve them, like an animal,” Pamuk told the entertainment journal Variety.
“In Ghezi Park [the scene of anti-government protests in 2013], that kind of thing gained political dimensions, [president Recep Tayyip] Erdogan mismanaged it, and a little green park became connected to a more secular anger with Erdogan,” he adds. The film is due to be released in the UK and the US next year.