Perspective Corner: The architecture of looking from outside

It has clean lines and creates a striking contrast against the blue sky. An image from within looking upward toward the geometric dome ceiling twists like an M.C. Escher drawing, only in stone.

It is an ambitious project to merge the artistic and religious in one building that includes references to both the architecture of a mosque and modernist ideas. It is risky and bold, and I admire that. But I am left unsatisfied. That the museum sits on a man-made island perpetuates the idea that art is distant and removed from the everyday, that high architecture is exulted and untouchable.

This may be because I am not seeing the museum in person. That is the challenge we all face as viewers of art and architecture through another media such as the computer. The problem, though, is the disconnect I feel between the museum and what it represents, and the mosques I see outside my window in Turkey. In my neighborhood, there are several mosques within walking and hearing distance. They are not museums. They have neon lights that glow green and feature a clumsily constructed collection of concrete slabs. Their speakers are bolted to the minarets and blare, rather than call, one to prayer. They are erected for the people who live here, certainly not meant to attract tourists.

The Museum of Islamic Art is undeniably a tourist attraction. How can it not be, when it exists in its own artificial private gulf? It makes me wonder what one is really being invited to see, the building or the art within? I admit I am more curious about the design of the museum than what is being exhibited. The shape of the museum alone suggests inspired architecture, a place in which one can experience the sublime. Does this happen while you are viewing the art, or while you are standing outside and gazing at the museum’s beauty?

From an aerial view, I wonder again at the physical separation that the museum has from any other building. The idea of a fortress, deliberate in I.M. Pei’s design, prevents other less attractive structures from encroaching on its singularity. This museum would not work in Istanbul. Not as a Museum-turned-Mosque-turned Fortress. We already have the Aya Sophia for that.

Fortress not for Turkey
As any visitor or inhabitant of Istanbul knows, glass office buildings, multi-level concrete apartments, shops, and crumbling uninhabitable spaces press their bellies up to the corner mosque, even encouraging sales and thrift below in markets and street-level stores. The collecting, buying and selling of artwork in the Museum of Islamic Art, however, or any museum for that matter, is nearly always invisible. Artwork appears not to be for sale, as if museums don’t partake in commerce because price tags are absent and taboo. We’re made not to think about the artwork being sold at auctions to other museums.

The museum’s greatest mistake in attempting to merge Islamic and Modernist architecture is that both end up isolated from the everyday. Being distanced from places where real people live, and where other homely and uninspired buildings dwell, The Museum of Islamic Art unfortunately confirms what most people already believe: That both architecture and art have little to do with them even if they are the ones doing the looking.

Rose Deniz is an artist, illustrator and design consultant living in Izmit.