Between object(ive) and subject(ive): Museum narratives with donald preziosi

Inspired by a museum visit made together with Donald Preziosi, in which he came across one of the Orientalist paintings of his great-grandfather Amadeo Preziosi, this paper scrutinizes the questions of object-subject relation, meaning, and identity. These museological questions led to a deeper discussion related to my dissertation topic: the museumification of the Topkapi Palace. The gradual museumification of this imperial complex during the nineteenth century, reached to a conclusion during the Republican Era, and eventually Topkapi Palace became the second most visited museum in Turkey today. The museum itself, however, still conveys multiple narratives and contradicting discourses to its visitors. While establishing a connection with the national heritage and Ottoman patrimony, the Topkapi Palace Museum also underlines the rupture, the “rift” between the imperial past and the Republican present, between the premodern and postmodern realities, between the sacred and the secular, and between the object and the subject.