27 August 2009 / TODAY'S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL
The Museum of Innocence, a project Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk has been working on for years, is set to be opened in the first half of 2010. The museum, located in İstanbul's Çukurcuma neighborhood, will feature items mentioned in Pamuk's most recent book of the same name, “Museum of Innocence.”
A signing ceremony was held on Friday at the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency office with the secretary-general of the agency, Yılmaz Kurt, and the author. Attending the ceremony as a representative of the Masumiyet (Innocence) Foundation, established to set up museums and other cultural centers and to support his cultural activities, Pamuk said 750 to 800 objects he mentions in his book have been collected so far to be exhibited in the museum. The project phase for the museum is planned to be completed in January 2010 and the museum will feature around 1,000 objects, all reflecting the culture of İstanbul, in accordance with the book's 83 chapters. “The Museum of Innocence, a project I have been planning for 10 years, is being completed with the support of the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency. The work of collecting objects to reflect cultural life in İstanbul has mostly been completed. We are still working with artists on the design of the imaginary objects mentioned in my book. It would take 12 hours for a visitor to see all the objects in the museum in detail,” Pamuk noted.Expressing their pleasure in supporting the opening of the museum, Kurt said, “We believe that this work of our internationally renowned author Orhan Pamuk will contribute greatly to the city of İstanbul and to the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture project.”
