The Museum of Innocence: Five concepts for challenging the status quo in art education

Abstract

In 2012, novelist Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, created a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Awarded 'European Museum of the Year' by the Council of Europe in 2014, Pamuk's Museum of Innocence represents a personal, local and small-scale model for museums. Crafted first as a novel of fiction and later as a real-life museum, the interplay of the novel-museum duo unfolds a love story through a collection of objects. The article, investigating Pamuk's curatorial lenses in arranging the museum collection, elaborates on five concepts extracted from this unconventional museum: Proximity to everyday objects, suggestiveness, polyphony, enquiry through the arts, and emphasis on the individual. By examining these key concepts in relation to and within the museum context, the article encourages discussion to challenge the status quo in approaching artworks and provides insight towards relevant practice for art educators who have close proximity to current art practices in art museums and similar institutions.