Online Talk
December 13, 2022 / 18.00
The Art of Weights and Measures exhibition, organized by Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Pera Museum with a selection from the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection, aims to explore the economy, culture, intercultural system relations, the dynamics of public trust and the journey of standardization of units, anchored around weights and measuring instruments, through the eyes of civilizations, gods, merchants, masters and apprentices, from the 2nd millennium BC to the present, and sheds light on the transformations and continuities. Expert speakers in the talk series titled “And the Stone Fell by Reason of Its Great Weight”, with inspiration from a verse in Homer's Iliad, will put a magnifying glass over the shopping, trade, weight and measurement systems used in the periods the exhibition covers, namely the of the Assyrian Trade Colony Period, the Hittite Empire, the Hellenistic Period, as well as the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
The last and interactive part of the online series will explore answers to questions regarding ancient marketplaces with Prof. Dr. Oğuz Tekin, moderated by Yavuz Selim Güler. The discussions will focus on the marketplaces in the city-states of Anatolia, which were the prominent locations of trade or daily shopping during the Classical, Hellenistic and the Roman Imperial period, and offer a closer look at the goods, scales, weights and coins used in these marketplaces.
The talk will be broadcast live on Pera Museum’s YouTube channel. The language of the event is Turkish.
Prof. Dr. Oğuz Tekin
Oğuz Tekin has been teaching at Koç University since 2017. Oğuz Tekin is the director of the Suna and İnan Kıraç Research Center for Mediterranean Civilizations and is the manager of the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Turkey and Corpus Ponderum Antiquorum et Islamicorum projects.
Yavuz Selim Güler
Yavuz Selim Güler studied Archeology and Art History at Koç University. Between 2018 and 2020, he was the teaching assistant of the Ancient Greek, Latin and Ancient History courses at Koç University. In 2020, he completed his master's thesis on “Roman Merchants and Bankers in the Province of Asia”. After working in the field of museum education for a while, he has been serving as the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Pera Museum’s Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection Supervisor since 2021.
Temporary Exhibition
As the measurement of discovery became the substance of myths, weighing and measuring, beyond being mere physical actions, became an important means of self-expression to those captivated by the universe and what lay beyond the boundaries of knowledge.
Click for more information about the exhibition.
In a bid to review the International System of Units (SI), the International Bureau of Weights and Measures gathered at the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures on November 16, 2018. Sixty member states have voted for changing four out of seven basic units of measurement. The kilogram is among the modified. Before describing the key points, let us have a closer look into the kilogram and its history.
Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017.
Inspired by the exhibition Istanbuls Today, Today's Stories series starts with Pelin Buzluk's story "Coal"! TThis series gathers short stories written by authors encouraged by the photographs in the exhibition.
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On Wednesdays, the students can
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