The glories of Istanbul have arrived in Paris.
From white marble statues of Greek and Roman gods to gleaming medieval Christian icons to a huge red Ottoman tent, an exhibition devoted to Istanbul seeks to expand French awareness of the city’s multicultural heritage in a country deeply skeptical of Turkey’s European aspirations.
Some 300 works of art from museums in 14 countries in Europe, Turkey and Qatar cap two years of work to create the exhibit “From Byzantium to Istanbul” at the Grand Palais. Some of the pieces from Turkish museums have left their country for the first time.
Bathed in subdued red light, the exhibition takes the visitor through 8,000 years of history of the “city of a hundred names” known as Byzantium, then Constantinople and now Istanbul. It focuses on its role linking Europe and Asia as “one port for two continents.”
The exhibition, opened this month by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, is the centerpiece of the “Year of Turkey,” a panoply of some 400 Turkish cultural events over nine months offering everyone a chance to become better acquainted with Turkey’s culture.
“(Istanbul) always has been a multicultural city, with many different languages, ethnicities, religions,” said Nazan Olcer, director of the Sakip Sanci Museum in Istanbul and curator of the exhibition.
“I wanted to bring also this colorful face of the city to the exhibition. Maybe, you know, you cannot change all the prejudices with one exhibition only, but at least you can try to open a window to the visitor, to ask him to think differently,” she told The Associated Press in an interview.
Olcer says she has collaborated on many international exhibitions that included art from Turkey. Some had focused just on Ottoman art, some on different periods of Turkish art and sometimes just one period of the Turks.
The decision to extend the time span and to focus on Istanbul gives the visitor insight into the array of cultures that have shaped the city, as well as its major role as capital of the Christian Byzantine and the Islamic Ottoman empires. Hard money training
Tags: Culture, ethnicities, exhibition, istanbul, religions, turkish museums
