A new exhibition entitled Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans: Archaeology, Diplomacy, and Art, curated by Professors Renata Holod and Robert Ousterhout of the University of Pennsylvania, is opening at the Pera Museum. The exhibition is about the painter, archaeologist, and museum curator Osman Hamdi Bey (the founder of Istanbul’s Archaeology Museums), the American photographer/archaeologist John Henry Haynes, and the German Assyriologist and archaeologist Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht.

All three were eminent figures in 19th century archaeology, Hilprecht as one of the excavators of Nippur in present-day Iraq (then under Ottoman control), Haynes as a photographer of the excavations of Assos, and Osman Hamdi Bey as an archaeologist at numerous sites all over the Ottoman Empire. Osman Hamdi Bey was, in addition, a painter of no small talent, who studied in Paris with Gérôme and Boulanger. As part of the exhibition, you will be able to see Osman Hamdi Bey’s own paintings, which fascinatingly mirror the style of the Western Orientalist painters of whose milieu he was a part.

The Pera Museum has long been known for its superb exhibitions on the subject of Western Orientalism. This is an excellent addition to those previous exhibitions, and anyone with an interest in archaeology and 19th century painting should not pass it up.

Where: Pera Museum; Meşrutiyet Caddesi No. 141 Tepebaşı; P: (0212) 334 99 00

When: Until January 8

How much: 10 TL; 7 TL (groups of 10 or more); 5 TL (concession)

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Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans at the Pera Museum; by Will Washburn