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The British Museum, Müze-i Hümâyun and the Travelling “Greek ideal” in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

Belgin Turan Özkaya
Belgin Turan Özkaya*
Affiliation:
Graduate Program in Architectural History, Middle East Technical University, Dumlupınar Bulvarı No:1, 06800 Çankaya Ankara, Turkey
*
belt@metu.edu.tr.
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Abstract

In standard architectural history surveys, the British Museum is portrayed as an example of nineteenth-century “neoclassicism”, or the “Greek revival.” Usually cited as among the motive factors in this revival are the writings about European travels and archaeological explorations in the then Ottoman lands of ancient Greece, as well as a general interest in Hellenic culture. Yet the cultural and architectural appropriation of the Hellenic is not analyzed in relation to the possible ties and tensions between European archaeological culture and the Ottoman response to antiquity. This paper is an attempt to align the British Museum’s “Arcadia in Bloomsbury” with the Ottoman Imperial Museum, Müze-i Hümâyun, in İstanbul, and to look at them afresh beyond the usual discourse of style. The paper analyzes the “neo-Grecian” “Temple of Arts and Sciences” in London, supposedly inspired by those in Priene and Teos in the Ottoman Empire, and the Müze-i Hümâyun, whose façade allegedly replicates the Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, transported to the museum from Sidon in Lebanon by Ottoman officials, understanding them as charged manifestations of “correspondence” or “transfer” within the web of circulating ideas, models, ancient remains, travellers, and architects of the nineteenth century.

Keywords

British MuseumMüze-i HümâyunPhilhellenismmuseum architectureneoclassicismRobert SmirkeAlexandre VallauryOsman Hamdiİstanbul Archaeological Museum
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 50: Special Issue on “Ambivalent Architectures” from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic , Spring 2014 , pp. 9 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2014

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