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Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Collection of Anatolian Weights and Measures

The Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection that Suna and İnan Kıraç began to form as early as the 1980s has grown rapidly over the years with the addiction of a number of pieces purchased from other collectors as well as regular acquisitions from Turkey and abroad. Presently, it is the most comprehensive and remarkable collection of its kind in Turkey.

Today this World-renowned collection consists of nearly eight thousand objects utilized in Anatolia from prehistory to date. These include key instruments used for measuring weight, length, and volume in a wide spectrum, extending from land measurements to commerce, from architecture to jewelry making and from seafaring to pharmaceutics. In this respect, the collection also serves as a priceless scientific resource for observing the relationship between systems of weights and measures across various periods and cultures, as well as their transformation and continuous use in the course of history.

Carefully selected to meet the demands of the exhibition hall, a broad range of objects from the collection is presented to the viewers in a chronological order. Pieces which have been excluded from this particular exhibition will be displayed periodically through “thematic” exhibitions in the future to shed more light on this fascinating area of interest in Anatolian cultural history.

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

In 1493, exactly 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was finishing the preparations for casting the equestrian monument (4 times life size), which Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan commissioned in memory of his father some 12 years earlier. 

Dancing on Architecture

Dancing on Architecture

I think it was Frank Zappa – though others claim it was Laurie Anderson – who said in an interview that ‘writing on music is much like dancing on architecture’. 

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

From the Age of Reason to the “Tortoise Trainer”

A Salon exhibition held in the Grand Palais in Paris on May 1, 1906 showcased an Ottoman painting. This was Osman Hamdi Bey’s famous “Tortoise Trainer”.