Seminar: The Art of Fiction – In the Museum

This seminar expores Orhan Pamuk’s museum vision in conjunction with the exhibition “Orham Pamuk: The Art of Fiction” at The Museum of Cultural History. The seminar features international scholars within—amongst other subjects—museology, cultural studies and social anthropology, and is organized in cooperation with The Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo.

In his 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk argues for the small and personalized museum. Our seminar seeks to explore the background for his literary and artistic venture into museums, and presents fresh research on how the Istanbul museum can be read and is actually experienced and received by its visitors. We further contextualize Pamuk’s vision of museums within both the Turkish and European museum landscape, and discuss critically his plea for museums telling the stories of individuals. What experience and insight can the small museum offer?

“In every novel and museum […] the most delicate and entertaining question is the distinction between what is real and what is fiction.”
Orhan Pamuk

Program

• 08:45 Registration and coffee
• 09:00 Professor Brita Brenna, University of Oslo: Introduction to the seminar
• 09:20 Short video address from Orhan Pamuk on the Oslo exhibition and seminar
• 09:30 Curator Selene Wendt, The Global Art Project: ORHAN PAMUK: THE ART OF FICTION
• 10:00 Professor Bernt Brendemoen, University of Oslo: THE ROLE OF THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE IN THE LITERARY OEUVRE OF ORHAN PAMUK
  Discussion and coffee break
• 11:00 Researcher Bjørn Magnus Staaf, Lund University: CITY HISTORY AND FICTION – STUDYING THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE AND ITS VISITORS
• 11:30 Associate Professor Malene Vest Hansen, University of Copenhagen: PERFORMING TIME IN SPACE: THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE
  Discussion and lunch break.
• 13:15 Research Associate Gönül Bozoğlu, Newcastle University: ‘IN MUSEUMS WE HAVE HISTORY, BUT WHAT WE NEED IS STORIES’: THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE IN THE TURKISH HERITAGE LANDSCAPE
• 13:45 Professor Christopher Whitehead, Newcastle University and University of Oslo: MUSEUMS OF EXPERIENCE: STORIES OF PLACES AND LIVES IN EUROPEAN MUSEUM PRACTICE
  Discussion and coffee break
• 14:45 Professor Mari Lending, Oslo School of Architecture and Design: THE SMALL MUSEUM: IDIOSYNCRACY AND SENTIMENTALITY
• 15:15 Discussion and conclusions
• 16:00 SUMMING UP – Professor Gro Ween and Professor Brita Brenna
• 16:30 Closing of the seminar

The seminar is free of charge. For registration, follow this link.

For questions, please contact martin.hager-saltnes@khm.uio.no, +47 97 19 25 35.

Biographies to be announced by 1 July, abstracts by 15 August