Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-h8lrw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-20T03:21:18.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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*
Affiliation:
Graduate Program in Architectural History, Middle East Technical University, Dumlupınar Bulvarı No:1, 06800 Çankaya Ankara, Turkey

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.

Information

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable