Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.
schoen · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.gokyaysatrancvakfi.org.tr/en/chess-museum/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gokyaysatrancvakfi.org.tr/en/chess-museum/
Somewhat unexpectedly, I thought it was one of the best museums I've ever visited in my life. It's the world's largest collection of chess sets, and is basically a museum of the chess set as an artistic genre, not of chess as a game. As you can see a bit from this site too, the artistic genre is quite broad and deep.
In the Gökyay Museum there were lots of questions raised by this genre:
* What historical events do people feel comfortable treating as distant history, versus something that you have to show respect or deference about?
* How would you make a chess set for blind players?
* Do chessboards have to be physically flat, not just topologically two-dimensional? Do they have to be horizontal rather than vertical?
* What events or activities can be metaphorically represented as a "battle"?
* How would different sculpture and painting traditions from around the world translate into a highly stylized chess set? How about different availability of materials?
* How do commercial marketing and pop culture leak into the comparatively culturally elite or refined realm of chess?
Anyway, it's just awesome and you should definitely go if you can.