Project title
Collecting Islamic artefacts and searching for a national identity in British Mandate Jerusalem: Marcu Beza between Neo Byzantinism and Exoticism.
Research question
How do we engage with the in-betweenness of people moving between former regions of the Ottoman empire, where material culture becomes the source for assessing mobility and national projects?
Project description
Roxana Coman’s research engages with the growing scholarly interest in museum institutional histories, provenance, and decolonisation, particularly in relation to the former territories of the Ottoman Empire. Building on this shift, she focuses on the largely overlooked case of a private collection assembled during the interwar period by Marcu Beza, who served as the General Consul of Romania in Jerusalem.
During his travels—tracing Romanian presence(s) across Asia Minor, Mount Athos, Istanbul, Cyprus, Mount Sinai, and beyond—Beza gathered a diverse range of artefacts, which were displayed in his Jerusalem quarters as a small private museum. The collection is notably eclectic, comprising textiles, metalwork, religious objects (both Islamic and Orthodox), furniture, jewellery, and watercolours.
Combining archival research with museum and critical heritage studies, Coman examines figures like Beza as intermediary agents operating within (post)imperial spaces of the former Ottoman world. Through this lens, she analyses how material culture reveals narratives of mobility, nation-building, inter-imperial exchange, and enduring imperial legacies.
Selected publications
- Cabrera, Ana; Coman, Roxana; Kulpa, Karolina A.; and Parry-Williams, Tim, “Searching for the Exotic: Textiles, Orientalism, and Identities” (2024). Textile Crossroads: Exploring European Clothing, Identity, and Culture across Millennia. 12. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/texroads/12
- Coman, Roxana (Hrsg.), Visiting the Danube “Museum” with Dimitrie Papazoglu’s Guide de voyageur. De Severin à la Mer Noire. With an essay by Constantin Ardeleanu, 2024, critical edition, open access, ArtDok platform, Arthistoricum- Heidelberg University, http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte/2024/9367
- Coman, Roxana, “A Spaghetti Western and the Contradictions of Memory. Radu Jude’s Aferim! (2015) and Ottoman Heritage”, East European Film Bulletin, 2022, vol. 127-Romanian Architecture Special Issue.
