The new Istanbul Modern museum is a study in contradictions:
It provides stunning views across the water of the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque on
the European side of this city and to Asia to the east, but at first glance, it
looks, simply, like a spiffy stack of waterfront containers. And both of those
aspects of its design are the point.
اضافة اعلان
The new space, designed by architect Renzo Piano, will
officially open on June 20, more than a month after welcoming its first
visitors and nearly 20 years after the museum, which specializes in modern and
contemporary art, opened in a former warehouse in the same location. (It then
moved, for a time, to a 120-year-old temporary space in the nearby Beyoglu
neighborhood.)
It is a culturally crucial moment for a country more in the
news these days after a devastating earthquake in February that killed tens of
thousands of people, and a fraught election in May that cemented President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hold on power for another five years. But, more than
that, the opening is also a celebration of the museum’s humble roots in a
utilitarian waterfront.
On a recent spring afternoon, as families and the city’s
famously pampered street cats lounged in an adjacent park, a crowd of about 100
people milled about the five stories of the 10,500sq.m. building. Several of
the opening exhibitions, each running for about six months, celebrate modern
Turkish artists but also honor modern art across the globe.
The building’s open staircases — a Piano signature — seem to
invite visitors to the upper floors from the lobby and then again to the
rooftop, where a reflecting pool has already become a popular hangout for the
chatty Bosporus sea gull crowd.
The official opening of the museum this month will come just
weeks after the reelection of a president under whose leadership the media has
been censored, art and music have been suppressed throughout the country, and
artists have been jailed. Several artists live in exile. Erdogan has shifted
the country away from the West (Turkey has failed to obtain EU membership) to
the East, striving to promote a more nationalist view among Turks from across
the political spectrum by embracing the country’s Ottoman past.
The museum’s vision, too, is to show the country’s past —
but also its present — through art. The works of many of the artists featured
in its galleries, seen together, form a sort of tapestry of Turkish life,
culture and art since the demise of the Ottoman Empire following World War I
and the country’s founding as a republic 100 years ago this October.
“Organizing exhibitions is storytelling, and we are telling
a story from the 1940s and all the social and economic changes, and the
founding of the republic and how that affected the artists,” said Oyku Ozsoy
Sagnak, chief curator of the Istanbul Modern, during a recent tour. “Each
gallery is like a section of about 10 years, so when you go through all of the
permanent collection, you can see how Turkey changed in time through the works
of the artists.”
That journey is exactly what was behind the concept of the
museum when it opened in 2004. It is funded by two corporations, the Eczacibasi
Group and Dogus Group-Bilgili Holding. Construction of the new building began
in 2018 (its cost is undisclosed). It was always the museum founders’ plan to
return the institution to its waterfront home.
“The main idea for this building has always been
transparency from the ground floor, and the idea is to connect the sea and the
park behind the museum with the park’s buildings from the 16th, 18th and 19th
centuries,” said Umit Mesci, a curator at the Istanbul Modern. “In this
transparent ground floor, it was about making everything free and open to the
public: the library, cafe and educational areas.”
For Piano, the Istanbul Modern was all about its location,
and he wanted to celebrate the building’s scrappy origins as a warehouse in his
new design, with its facade of aluminum panels, along a waterfront area that
has been transformed in the past several years with restaurants and luxury
hotels. But the inspiration came more from the natural setting.
“I love a building by the water because water makes things
beautiful,” Piano said in a recent phone interview from his home in Paris. “And
the Istanbul Modern is about a dialogue between the building and the water.”
There were also some very practical considerations,
including safety in an earthquake zone — a design element made even more urgent
since the devastation in southern Turkey and northern Syria from February’s
earthquake. A model of the building’s construction, on display in a room on the
first floor, depicts the complicated way it was anchored with bendable giant
pillars at the core of the building to absorb the impact of a major earthquake.
“We had to make a solid building that will be there for
centuries, especially based on what happened several months ago with the big
earthquake,” Piano said. “When you make a place for people for art and music,
accessibility and safety are fundamental elements.”
From the start, a sense of community has been the mission of
the museum, and its opening appears to have gathered momentum — perhaps almost
as a distraction — in a country that has been grappling with uncertainty
surrounding its democratic future.
The focus of the museum is squarely on Turkish art, at least
for now, in the opening shows.
“Just for the opening, the permanent exhibition gallery is
starting with the works from 1945 to 2000, in order to show the transformation
and development of modern and contemporary art in Turkey,” Sagnak, the chief
curator, explained during the tour as a school group milled about the hall.
“All of the artists you see in this gallery either studied or lived abroad,
especially in Paris after the war, and many are part of the Nouvelle École de
Paris, which supported a lot of Turkish artists.”
From every vantage point of the Istanbul Modern, it is all
about the setting. In a city that is both Asia and Europe, dilapidated and
vibrantly contemporary, ancient and modern, the connecting thread, for Piano,
is what has defined this city for centuries.
“If you are an architect, you have to understand what the
genius of the place is, and you have to catch the spirit of the place, and
Istanbul is about the water,” he said. “There is magic in the light on the
Bosporus.”
Read more Travel
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
