Online Exhibition
In this section of the permanent exhibition, you are one with the "Firsts," women who have enriched the City of Istanbul in the fields of culture and the arts: those who were born in this city, or who moved to Istanbul, or who spent a part of their lives in this city, beginning in 660 B.C. when the city was called Byzantion, and then when its name changed to Konstantinopolis about A.D. 330, and to Kustantiniye, Kostantiniye and İstanbul after 1453.
The section has been planned with the goal of encouraging in the reader a closer connection with these special lives. These introductory pages consist of short biographical notes which will continue to be added to and supplemented with new names. For the Istanbul Women's Museum, „first" is not a static concept. In the permanent exhibition, a biography that had initially appeared as a "first" may have to gracefully yield its place to a newly discovered "first," who was not known, or had been suppressed, in the past but revealed by further research in women's history.
Because detailed research has not yet been done with regard to some of the women included, or because we have not yet been able to access documents that do exist, some information in the introductory pages is partial; and a full picture has not been able to be completed. Your sharing your knowledge and documents on the Istanbul Women's Museum site will be a valuable contribution to the history of women in the City. Istanbul Women's MuseumTranslation into English: Margaret Fearey, Milton, Massachusetts, USA