Later, the small museums in the backstreets of European cities led me to realize that museums – just like novels – can also speak for individuals. Most of these were historical monuments or, quite rare outside the Western world, they were places with an air of a government office about them. In my childhood there were very few museums in Istanbul. But I do not have it in me to speak about museums with anger. I take museums very seriously, and that sometimes leads to angry, forceful thoughts. I love museums and I am not alone in finding that they make me happier with each passing day. Insofar as craft, too, concerns itself with everyday objects, individuals, and storytelling, we found it a compelling read. He outlined his thoughts in a gorgeous book, The Innocence of Objects, equal parts museum catalogue and essay collection, published last year by Abrams. Creating it prompted Pamuk to think deeply about museums’ potential to tell stories on this scale – that of individual human beings. Housed in a converted home, it evokes daily life in Istanbul in the second half of the 20th century. So while it has a relationship with the book, the museum also “has its own spirit,” Pamuk writes. Pamuk conceived of the museum and the novel simultaneously in fact, instead of conjuring an object and then seeking its real-life counterpart, he allowed items he culled from Istanbul’s flea markets and friends’ homes to guide his prose. It is a collection of ordinary objects, amassed over decades as Pamuk wrote a novel of the same name about a man who obsessively collects things his beloved has touched.

His Museum of Innocence doesn’t have white walls, famous artworks, or rare antiquities. Last year, Orhan Pamuk opened a museum in Istanbul, the city where the Nobel Prize-winning writer grew up. American Craft Council American Craft Council Main navigation

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