Antalya Culture and Arts presents “Discovering A Remarkable Memoir: Ernst Krickl’s Lycian Journal, 1892” exhibition that reveals early expeditions of Lycia region.

The increasing passion for archaelogy in Europe, the Ottoman State’s growing interest in the West as part of the modernization movement, and the amelioration of the transportation network allowed Anatolia – the center of historic diversity – to become a new and accessible area of discovery for European researchers as of the second half of the 19th century.

The scholars from the Vienna Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna began organizing expeditions to the regions of Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia in southwest Anatolia, located far from the main arteries of transportation. During this period, architectural remains and inscriptions were recorded, maps were drawn, and some of the excavated works were transported to Vienna to be made part of the Family Collections of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The expedition of 1892 also included Captain Ernst Krickl, known in his military record as artist, tachygraph, photographer and painter. Krickl’s topographic drawings were advanced enough to accompany scholarly expeditions that would continue throughout the century.

In the ensuing years, Krickl collected, in three personal albums, his notes and the “off-duty” photographs he took during the journey. Based on these memoir – albums, the exhibition sheds the light upon geographic and archaelogical views, local buildings, human profiles, and anectodes.

The exhibition, which is organised collaboratively Istanbul Research Institute, can be visited until 4 March 2018 at Antalya Culture and Arts.