On November 23 the Museum Practices and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage class of the Archaeology Department went on a field trip to Beypazarı organized by Prof. Dominique Kassab Tezgör. The group was accompanied by two curators from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s Department of Museum Application, Canan Caştaban and Cansın Ünver.
When the visitors arrived in Beypazarı they were greeted by Mayor Cengiz Özalp and his wife Hamide, who are eager to preserve and make known the cultural and historical context of the city through its museums. The class then visited the Living Museum and the Turkish Bath Museum, guided by Dr. Sema Demir of the Department of Turkish Folklore at Gazi University, before finishing their tour at the Beypazarı City History Museum.
During their visit, the students had the chance to get an inside look at how museums are run, and to apply the theoretical knowledge they have learned in their course work to actual museum practices. The curators, Ms. Caştaban and Ms. Ünver, helped them understand how these museums were created, how the exhibitions were constructed and what a museum should be like through critical analysis of each museum visited.
In addition, the class has been assigned a project at the Beypazarı City History Museum. This will be a workshop in which the students will completely renovate a room dedicated to traditional dresses and textiles, redesigning and organizing a new exhibition.
“Museums are timeless places capturing the history and the culture of a society,” remarked one of the class members following the field trip. “Beypazarı is an astonishing city that is preserving its cultural heritage with determination, and in a very attractive way.”
By Aslı Asiye Duman & Zeynep Kuşdil (HART/IV)