Tracking the Development of Museums Through Italy and Turkey

Abstract

Museums are the cultural structures that the historical and cultural values of societies are transferred to the future generations by researching, preserving, and exhibiting them to the public. The first examples of museology had been observed with the creation of personal collections by noble and ruling class people and the designing of private rooms in palaces to display these collections. The wars and revolutions that were experienced in history had a direct effect on museology and changed the perception of museums. In order to completely understand the present meaning of the museum, it is important to examine the evolutions it has experienced in the historical process. This study, which was prepared for this purpose, was handled through Italy and Turkey. Italy was chosen since it is accepted as the country where collecting started and also it has made a great contribution to the development of museology. On the other hand, the reason for choosing Turkey is that although a museum was not officially established until the 19th century, it has a long tradition of collecting similar to Italy. In the first two chapters, the development of museology in Italy and Turkey was discussed separately starting from the first collecting practices to the 21st century. In the third section, the developments in both countries that are mentioned in the previous sections were discussed by comparing each other with the time charts, tables, and diagrams, and came to a conclusion by analyzing the development process of the museology semantically and spatially.