When the Queen toured the Design Cities show at Istanbul Modern on her state visit to Turkey, I found myself experiencing at first hand exactly how museums play a part in contemporary diplomacy. There was a complex set of messages involved, both in the visit and the exhibition.
The royal visit was Britain signalling that it sees Turkey as a vitally important place. The exhibition was a reflection that contemporary Turkey is looking to embrace wider definitions of contemporary culture. The fact that the Queen came to see it was a symbolic celebration of the way that two museums can work together.
What makes the chance to curate an exhibition that will travel from Istanbul to London such an intriguing challenge is the way it demands an approach that can work in such different places.
Istanbul Modern, at the time under the directorship of David Elliot, wanted the Design Museum to curate an exhibition that would introduce its audience to the idea of design in the widest sense.
Our idea was Design Cities, a look at how seven cities at various points in their histories have shaped our contemporary world.
It starts with London in 1851, and tries to capture the moment that the teenage William Morris, taken to the Crystal Palace by his mother, refused to set foot inside it, so convinced was he that he would find nothing but crass machine-made objects, dramatically capturing the simultaneous triumph of industrialisation, and the moral panic that it induced.
By way of Vienna in 1908, Dessau in 1926, Paris in 1931, Los Angeles in 1949, Milan in 1957, and Tokyo in 1988, the exhibition comes back to the London of the present day, currently on the crest of a wave as a world centre for contemporary design.
The story is told in a series of objects and drawings drawn from collections across Europe. Design is a powerful way of understanding the world, and the artefacts reflect what was happening at the time, from the Vespa that gave a generation of Milanese youth cheap mobility for the first time, to the playful electronics that made Tokyo in the 1980s the first Asian city to challenge Europe and America's hold on the world's taste buds.
When we opened in Turkey, the question that a lot of the papers were asking is why wasn't Istanbul included. That would have been a different exhibition. The point about Istanbul is that it is on the edge of writing its own next chapter in the story, but is not there yet. When we bring the show to London in September, I suspect the issue is more likely to be how long can London's grip on the culture of design last.
Deyan Sudjic is the director of the Design Museum, London.
Design Cities is at Istanbul Modern until 10 August, then at the Design Museum from 5 September-4 January 2009
The royal visit was Britain signalling that it sees Turkey as a vitally important place. The exhibition was a reflection that contemporary Turkey is looking to embrace wider definitions of contemporary culture. The fact that the Queen came to see it was a symbolic celebration of the way that two museums can work together.
What makes the chance to curate an exhibition that will travel from Istanbul to London such an intriguing challenge is the way it demands an approach that can work in such different places.
Istanbul Modern, at the time under the directorship of David Elliot, wanted the Design Museum to curate an exhibition that would introduce its audience to the idea of design in the widest sense.
Our idea was Design Cities, a look at how seven cities at various points in their histories have shaped our contemporary world.
It starts with London in 1851, and tries to capture the moment that the teenage William Morris, taken to the Crystal Palace by his mother, refused to set foot inside it, so convinced was he that he would find nothing but crass machine-made objects, dramatically capturing the simultaneous triumph of industrialisation, and the moral panic that it induced.
By way of Vienna in 1908, Dessau in 1926, Paris in 1931, Los Angeles in 1949, Milan in 1957, and Tokyo in 1988, the exhibition comes back to the London of the present day, currently on the crest of a wave as a world centre for contemporary design.
The story is told in a series of objects and drawings drawn from collections across Europe. Design is a powerful way of understanding the world, and the artefacts reflect what was happening at the time, from the Vespa that gave a generation of Milanese youth cheap mobility for the first time, to the playful electronics that made Tokyo in the 1980s the first Asian city to challenge Europe and America's hold on the world's taste buds.
When we opened in Turkey, the question that a lot of the papers were asking is why wasn't Istanbul included. That would have been a different exhibition. The point about Istanbul is that it is on the edge of writing its own next chapter in the story, but is not there yet. When we bring the show to London in September, I suspect the issue is more likely to be how long can London's grip on the culture of design last.
Deyan Sudjic is the director of the Design Museum, London.
Design Cities is at Istanbul Modern until 10 August, then at the Design Museum from 5 September-4 January 2009
