A city-wide trend for new museums, exhibition spaces and art galleries displays where this rapidly changing city is going, rather than where it has been.
Orhan Pamuk is not only Turkey’s most famous living novelist. The Nobel Prize laureate and author responsible for the bestselling books My Name is Red, Snow and The Black Book also turned museum curator in April 2012, opening The Museum of Innocence, a one-of-a-kind attraction in the centre of Istanbul. Located in a 19th-century townhouse in Çukurcuma, an up-and-coming neighbourhood a short walk from the city’s main shopping thoroughfare İstiklâl Caddesi, the museum is intended to be a companion piece to the novel of the same name that Pamuk published in 2008.
Related article: An insider’s tour of Hagia Sophia
Inside, the cabinets act as a catalogue of the thousands of original objects that Pamuk collected from antique stores and markets located in Istanbul to help plot his novel and chart his obsessive love story between upper class Kemal Basmacı and his second cousin Füsun The displays, which are created from an assortment of sepia photographs, classic film posters from the golden age of Turkish cinema, detailed maps and a variety of Turkish memorabilia, are a tribute to the writer’s hometown and a chronicle of Istanbul’s seismic growth over the past 30-odd years. In a rather smart twist, the 83 exhibits complement each chapter chronologically as the characters — and the city — develop and mature from the 1970s to the 2000s.
It is a wonderfully conceited idea to bring the pages of a novel to life, but the building is also the closest thing Istanbul has to a bona fide modern history museum. At an ideological level, the museum is symptomatic of a current trend in Istanbul — new museums, exhibition spaces and art galleries that come with a twist. While most visitors to the city make a beeline to the Ottoman-era Topkapı Palace Museum or the Byzantine Hagia Sophia museum (both located a stone’s throw from the iconic minarets of the Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet), those who visit Istanbul’s more creative museums gain an insight into where the city is going, rather than where it has been.
To see this for yourself, walk through the streets neighbouring the Museum of Innocence – an area known for its bountiful antique and junk stores – to get a glimpse into a side of Pamuk’s glorified Istanbul of the 1970s and ‘80s that is fast disappearing. Turkish men sit in street cafes and kebab outlets such as Çukurcuma Köftecisi, drinking traditional sweet tea from thimble-size glasses and playing backgammon; their wives hanging out the washing in the dilapidated apartments above. From Çukurcuma, make your way up the steep hill Yeniçarşı Caddesi, to the Ara Café (Tosbaĸa Sokak 2, off Yeniçarşı Caddesi; 0-212-245-4105), a museum and restaurant dedicated to the life and work of Turkey’s most celebrated photographer, Ara Guler. Larger than life black and white prints of Istanbul from the 1930s and 1940s frame the walls – there are evocative shots of overcrowded Bosphorus ferries and gnarly fishermen on the Galata Bridge – and it is a great place to refuel with a strong Turkish coffee or a freshly-pressed lemonade. Ara Guler is the owner; if you are lucky, you may spot him when he discreetly pops in for a simple traditional lunch of white cheese, olives and crusty bread.
A five-minute walk south back along İstiklâl Caddesi takes you to SALT Beyoğlu, one of Istanbul’s most offbeat cultural spaces, which debuted on the city’s arts scene in 2011. Housed in a beautiful mansion built in 1860, the 1,130sqm, three-level exhibition space is home to ever-changing modern art exhibitions and workshops mixing architecture, design, urbanism, and social and economic history. Recently, it featured a major retrospective on multidisciplinarian Egyptian Hassan Khan.
If that is not enough of a cultural overload, climb aboard the nearby Tünel funicular that rattles up and down Galata hill from Tünel to Karaköy. From the base station you can visit SALT’s new sister museum, SALT Galata, located in the shadow of the medieval Galata Tower, a five minute journey by foot at the bottom of the hill. The building was originally designed to house the original Ottoman Bank, but now it is a gigantic modern art research centre, cafe, bookstore and auditorium where the city’s art crowd regularly hangs out, enjoying talks, events, film screenings and contemporary art exhibitions
For a different perspective of the city’s new museums, catch a commuter ferry from nearby Eminönü quayside, via either the northerly s neighbourhoods of Arnavutköy or Bebek (a 40-minute ride), to the Emirgan quay, a brisk five-minute walk from the exquisite Sakıp Sabancı Museum. Bequeathed to the city in 2002 by Turkey’s most renowned business tycoon and philanthropist, Sakıp Sabancı , the museum is dedicated to calligraphic art, religious documents and paintings from the Ottoman-era of the 1300 to the 1900s, and holds regular one-off modern art exhibitions. What makes it unique, however, is not the vast array of fine art on display, nor the fact that the galleries are housed in a glorious mansion once home to high ranking pashas (a high ranking Ottoman general) and Egyptian governors. Rather unexpectedly, it is the on-site restaurant Muzedechanga that draws the plaudits. Located on the roof terrace above the museum, the restaurant serves up Mediterranean fusion – the grilled loin of lamb with quince, and white grouper with green chilli salsa are exceptional – and its ever-changing menu is inspired by the temporary exhibitions in the galleries below. Recently it has introduced a series of themed menus including “If Rembrandt Could Cook” and “If Monet Could Cook”, dedicated to the French masters. Items on the latter artistic menu include asparagus with croquette of quail eggs and pea soup with almonds and wild flowers.
It would be a shame to come this far north in Istanbul and miss out on the equally impressive Borusan Contemporary, an office-turned permanent art gallery and the first of its kind in the country. Located in the bustling business district of Maslak, the museum only opens to the public when the staff have shut down their computers and tided their desks and papers away for the night after 5pm. In any other city, the concept may raise eyebrows, but in a place where a book of fiction can become a reality, it is a sign that anything is possible, thanks to Istanbul’s new museum manifesto.
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