Toyanc Degerli
The numerous significant historical artifacts of the ancient city of Ephesus are today housed in the Ephesus Museum in Vienna, which is located in the Neue Hofburg and can be visited by the public. Despite the fact that this collection, along with many other artifacts and collections, has been removed from its original homeland, the city of Ephesus remains their true home and is today one of the most visited local recreation areas in Turkey. The research and historical process concerning the collection of antiquities that arrived in Vienna from one of the most famous ancient cities in the world, as well as the changing archaeological and ethical values of the present day, could possibly enable a repatriation of these objects to their original location in the future. However, until the realization of this scenario, the spatial relationship of these objects to their place of origin diminishes day by day, and they remain largely unknown and inaccessible to today’s visitors and residents of Ephesos. The starting point of this project is the effort to materialize theoretical questions from the fields of art history, heritage conservation, and museology through an architectural approach, rendering them spatially accessible. The objective is to relate the history of the antique objects from Ephesus, now held in Vienna — considering the existential, ontological, and semantic questions posed by the objects presented in the designed exhibition space—to the perceptible functions of material and space, as well as to their assigned meanings and roles. In brief, the project involves the conceptualization of an exhibition that articulates the narrative of objects that are not physically present at their original site.
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