Inside Museums

Join art critic Alastair Sooke on a journey of discovery to the world's most inspiring museums. This time he is in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul as he explores the recently built new home of Istanbul Modern. He finds out what makes the art born at this unique meeting point of cultures so special and learns about Turkish culture as seen through the eyes of the country's most acclaimed modern artists.

Join art critic Alastair Sooke on a journey of discovery to the world's most inspiring museums. In this episode, he visits Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul, as he explores the Pera Museum's collection of Orientalist paintings and discovers what the people of Turkey today feel about it. The Pera Museum has a unique collection that charts the relationship between East and West, and in particular how Western painters in the 19th Century appropriated the culture of the Near East for their own ends - an art movement today known as Orientalism.

Join art critic Alastair Sooke on a journey of discovery to the world's most inspiring museums. This time he's in Doha, capital of the Gulf state of Qatar, to explore the Museum of Islamic Art. The collection tells the story of the blossoming of Islamic art in the region and beyond; influencing and cross-fertilising with diverse cultures and traditions in places as far afield as Spain and Indonesia. Alastair discovers extraordinary objects and the stories behind them that go far beyond the traditional carpets and calligraphy often associated with the art of the Islamic world. He explores I.M. Pei's remarkable museum building, home to what is thought by many to be the best collection of its type in the world, and finds out what this richly varied heritage means to the people who live in the region today.