Latest news with #OrhanPamuk


The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on the museum of the year: a history of the north-east in 3m objects
'Real museums are places where time is transformed into space,' Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel laureate, writes in his 2008 novel The Museum of Innocence. Pamuk created a small museum of everyday objects based on the novel in celebration of his home city of Istanbul. A long way from the Bosphorous, this is what Beamish, the Living Museum of the North sets out to do, recreating the 19th- and 20th-century working-class history of north-east England over 350 acres in County Durham. Last week it won the prestigious Art Fund museum of the year award. The shortlist included museums from the UK's four nations: Perth Museum, which opened last year; Chapter, a multi-arts space in Cardiff; Golden Thread, a contemporary arts hub in Belfast; and Compton Verney, an 18th-century Warwickshire mansion, whose sculpture park is home to Louise Bourgeois's Spider. Inspired by the open-air museums in Scandinavia, Beamish was founded by Frank Atkinson, who became its curator in 1970. At the time, his vision of rebuilding a slag heap really did mean taking coals to Newcastle, but he recognised that the region's industries, and with them its identity, was in danger of disappearing. The people of north-east England 'tended to have a chip on their shoulder about their past, proud of it and yet feeling that it was undervalued', he said. 'The museum was for them. Tourism didn't exist up there when we first planned it.' Where many museums have struggled to return to pre-pandemic figures, last year Beamish welcomed 839,000 visitors – the highest number in its 55 years. As part of a £20m development project, a 1950s village has been added to its Edwardian town, with miners' cottages and a farm. Buildings from the surrounding area have been transported brick by brick and many of the 3m objects have been donated from people's attics. From teapots to trolleybuses, this is the ephemera of ordinary lives. More than 800 local volunteers and staff in period costumes bring the past alive. There are no glass walls, velvet ropes or wall captions. You can buy bread from the Victorian bakery, pat pit ponies and get a 50s bouffant blow‑dry at the hairdressers. This is clearly a sanitised version of the past, where you can go down a pit without getting your hands dirty. The cultural historian Robert Hewison included Beamish in what he identified as a Thatcherite phenomenon of ersatz nostalgia and commercialisation: 'Instead of manufacturing goods, we are manufacturing heritage,' he wrote in his 1987 polemic The Heritage Industry. In a region where the waiting list for social housing has increased dramatically in the last five years, an idyllic 'model' village might have been expected to cause resentment. Instead, research shows that it is a source of pride. Local museums tell local stories. They also employ local people and bring in visitors. In its first year, Perth Museum exceeded its visitor target by 50%, while city-centre footfall also increased. For many, museums are as much a part of the British summer as music festivals and sporting events. They are certainly a lot cheaper. With the world's treasures in our pockets, and limitless information at our fingertips, today's museums must offer something more, especially for children. Long before mobile phones, Beamish was one of the first immersive museum experiences. Here the past is not a foreign country – you can get there on a tram.


The Hindu
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Inside Orhan Pamuk's dreamscape
Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk has always dreamed of becoming a painter. In Memories of Distant Mountains, his recently launched memoir, he says, 'At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels.' This book features a selection from the illustrated notebooks he maintained from 2009 to 2022. Alongside journal entries, translations and commentary are colourful paintings of landscapes, ships, roads and monuments. He talks about his country, the city of Istanbul, his travels to Jaipur and Goa and New York and many European cities, his relationships and his growing impatience with The Museum of Innocence, a museum he set up in Istanbul in 2012. Here, installations referenced the daily objects described in his eponymous novel. This was a productive period for Pamuk, when major novels A Strangeness in My Mind (2015) and Nights of Plague (2022) were published. The back story 'Between the ages of 7 and 22, I thought I was going to be a painter. At 22, I killed the painter inside of me and began writing novels. In 2008, I walked into a stationery shop, bought two big bags of pencils, paints, and brushes, and began joyfully and timidly filling little sketchbooks with drawings and colours. The painter inside of me hadn't died after all. But he was full of fears and terribly shy. I made all my drawings inside notebooks so that nobody would see them. I even felt a little guilty: surely this must mean I secretly deemed words insufficient. So why did I bother to write? None of these inhibitions slowed me down. I was eager to keep drawing, and drew wherever I could.' The house and daily life in Goa 'This is the room I've been steadily working in for the past three years, where I sometimes take naps in the afternoon, and where I occasionally go to sleep after midnight.' Pamuk spent several months in Goa from 2009 to 2011. He swam in the sea and continued to work on A Strangeness in My Mind in the mornings. In the evening he followed the events of the Arab Spring on TV and the uprisings led him to think about Nights of Plague. Beyoğlu and Hacımemi Street 'It was Hacımemi Street. Small, two- or three-story houses with bay windows. These types of houses have always felt smothering to me. Then again, to have come for the first time to a place that feels so familiar, so recognizable. To have stumbled upon a street like this for the first time after having lived in this city for sixty-eight years... I have noticed on this walk that Beyoğlu is actually very lively; even on this coldest of winter days, there is plenty in the shop displays and behind restaurant windows to keep the passerby occupied. I drew the bricks on this wall here one by one, and I'd like to think about that a little more. As I placed, drew, and coloured each brick, I was as happy as a child. But it also felt like filling in a colouring book. Istiklal Street, Yüksek Kaldırım Street, and the Galata Tower are just ahead.' It's a wrap 'As I've been too busy these past few days to write in here... I've drawn this picture instead. I finished Nights of Plague in this room in Cihangir, writing for 12 hours every day. At night I would sleep for three hours, then write for an hour, then go back to sleep for another hour.' William Blake and I Reasons I identify with the romantic painter poet WILLIAM BLAKE: * he likes flames and fires * he writes, and he paints * words and images mingle on the page * he sees the page as a whole * he uses the branches of a tree to split up the page * he envisions everything on the page * he sees words and images together Edited excerpts from Memories of Distant Mountains with permission from Penguin Random House India.