A display at the Museum of Innocence, titled “Istanbul‘s Streets, Bridges, Hills and Squares,” (Photo: Jackie Nickerson)
Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (whose books include My Name is Red and Snow, among others) is an advocate of small museums (a topic I wrote about here.) We live in an era of mega-museums that work hard to reach the everyday person, and often that sends the experience in the direction of the shopping mall rather than a contemplative public space. As Pamuk has written, “Museums must not confine themselves to showing us pictures and objects from the past; they must also convey the ambiance of the lost time from which those objects have come to us. And this can only happen through personal stories.”
That is easier to do in a smaller venue than a large one, and in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine Pamuk highlights some of his favorite small museums—the Gustave Moreau in Paris, Bagatti Valsecchi in Rome, Frederic Marès in Barcelona, Rockox House in Antwerp, Mario Praz in Rome, and his own Museum of Innocence in Istanbul. (I have to a few of my favorites to this list: Musée Guimet in Paris, Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.)
Given his passion for the small and more intimate museum experience, Pamuk began thinking about creating one of his own. He started collecting objects from everyday life in Istanbul. As these objects accumulated in his home, he found a story emerging. That story became a novel, The Museum of Innocence, and his collection of carefully chosen objects are now housed in a museum of the same name.
The fundamental difference between the Museum of Innocence and the other small museums that have inspired me is the fact that, unlike Gustave Moreau or Mario Praz, the people whose objects and images we look at in this museum are not real, but fictional. I love to see visitors tricked by the reality of the imaginary characters’ slippers, playing cards, cutlery, ID cards and even their cigarette butts, to the extent that they forget that the characters in the novel are invented. And whether they’ve read the novel or not, I’m always glad to see visitors discovering firsthand that what is being displayed in this museum is not simply the plot of a novel, but a particular mood, an atmosphere created by objects. And when they ask me why I’ve set up this kind of museum, I respond that it is because I love small museums that bring out our individuality.
Pamuk’s advocacy of the small museum experience parallels a number of other trending ideas that speak to a more individually curated, non-canonical, personal form of expression sized for one human at a time. The very idea of “the canon” and how we engage with it has been questioned throughout the modern era. (For those with literary interest, two excellent essays responding to the 20th anniversary of Harold Bloom’s release of The Western Canon can be read here.) But in an era of blockbuster museum shows and epic-sized undertakings, a call to the more intimate and personal is a refreshing counterweight.
Many writers’ houses have been turned into small museums. Some are more diverse and interesting beyond just being monuments to fame; others are more scholarly in orientation, and some are kind of boring.
I like both kinds of museums: enormous ones and tiny ones. Though, like mega-malls, the large museums sometimes do overwhelm. It’s easy to overlook fascinating smaller-scale pieces in a museum that also houses wall-sized paintings and large sculptures.
I’m of the both/and mind set too Ann but as Pamuk points out, sometimes the mega museums quash everything around them. This passage from his article speaks to that:
The massive, Louvre-like state museums that are being set up, at great expense, in non-Western cities like Beijing and Abu Dhabi, where individual rights and freedom of thought are often suppressed, do nothing to nurture the efforts of local artists and individuals. Instead, these monumental new structures seem to crush the area around them, overwhelming the nearby neighborhoods and the city itself, and acting as smokescreens for the crimes of authoritarian regimes.
I hadn’t completely considered museums as state-run monuments announcing status to the world; but that is certainly true. And when money goes toward those big places, smaller concerns and less well-known artists would generally be overlooked.
Good points. Thanks for switching my perspective.
There is a wonderful small museum in northern Vermont, The Museum of Everyday Life, which last year had an exhibit on the pencil. http://museumofeverydaylife.org/exhibitions-collections/current-exhibitions
I have heard about that museum but never been there. Thank you for reminding me. Next summer!
Wow! Who knew there were niche museums!
And so beguiling to boot!
Re: small museums as more likely to be supporters of local artists– http://wp.me/p1RDyQ-zD
My favorite small museum is Musee Marmottan in Paris. They have the largest collection of Monets in the world (bequeathed by Monet’s son from his own collection). Often they exhibit some of Monet’s unfinished work, which are invaluable examples of his painting process.