Under the leadership of SSM Director Prof. Dr. Ahu Antmen, the permanent exhibition, featuring over 100 works compiled under more than 20 formal and chronological headings, will be open from the second day of the holiday. Offering a "visual Eid al-Fitr" effect with its rich collection, the event promises an opportunity to experience academic expertise infiltrating the public sphere with an interactive and civic approach.
Author: Evrim Altuğ - evrimaltug@gmail.com
Established 24 years ago in 2002 as the Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM), the SSM Painting Collection is being presented to art lovers for the first time in its renewed form, thanks to a special selection by SSM Director, academician, and critic Prof. Dr. Ahu Antmen, who took over the reins from Dr. Nazan Ölçer.
The collection, which Sakıp Sabancı began to build in the 1970s and which expanded in scope and chronology under the leadership of Güler Sabancı, is being presented to the public with the support of Sabancı Holding, and the museum will keep its doors open from the second day of Ramadan. The collection can be visited in the museum's 'Gallery -1' area between 10:00 and 18:00, except Mondays.
SSM's new exhibition opens with a surprise, featuring cartoon animations on the theme of 'art and viewer' taken from Akbaba magazine by Ramiz Gökçe, immersing viewers in captivating views of the old Bosphorus and Anatolia. In this context, the exhibition also showcases many important collections of the institution, including the 'Emirgân Archive' and the 'Avni Lifij Archive'.
In this respect, the exhibition presents many long-term loaned works to art lovers, such as the ‘Seyhun Binzet Postcard Collection’, the Istanbul University Feyhaman Duran Culture and Art House Collection, or the Aksoy and Merey Family Collection.
The collection exhibition, presented within a scope that extends from 19th-century Ottoman painting to modern Turkish painting in Turkey's art history, brings together works from different fields such as interiors, landscapes, still lifes, and academic nude drawings by Osman Hamdi Bey, Şeker Ahmed Paşa, Süleyman Seyyid, Halil Paşa, Hüseyin Zekai Paşa, and Hoca Ali Rıza. The exhibition also features works by many masters such as Ahmed Ziya Akbulut, İzzet Ziya, and Nazmi Ziya Güran.
On the other hand, the exhibition presents visitors with rarely seen private collection pieces by artists such as Fikret Muallâ, Hale Asaf, Nurullah Berk, Nuri İyem, and Selim Turan, who represent the ‘original and experimental aspect’ of modern Turkish painting.
Celebrating the journey of Turkish women towards freedom and individuality, beginning in the late Ottoman period, with portraits from the early Republican era, the exhibition also unveils a unique art historical interpretation by bringing together self-portraits, expressionist masters, and signatures that blend tradition and the future while preserving graphic style.
In this sense, the event, which captivates visitors with works such as Halil Paşa's ‘Painter Girl and Her Studio’, İzzet Ziya's ‘Girl by the Sea’, or Nazmi Ziya Güran's ‘Woman Sitting on a Deck Chair’, also offers the public an alternative civil art history map with its art history genealogy and drawing and archive workshop content, for art lovers of all ages. On the other hand, in SSM's exhibition, which is like a sweet treat for the holiday, one piece that inspires admiration comes from Şevket Dağ. In this magnificent work, measuring 250 x 180 cm, from the SSM collection, the painter immortalizes the interior architecture of Hagia Sophia with dramatic illumination, while the work also draws attention to the building's ancient appearance, depicting 14th-century Byzantine angel icons (Seraphim Angels) from that period.
The exhibition at SSM also impresses with the art historical and academic texts accompanying the visitor. The exhibition, which opened with the presentation of the collection, includes selections/sections such as ‘Still Life’ and “Paintings and Women,” which can be summarized as follows: “Exhibitions as a new form of experience,” “Changing visual culture and art education,” “Artistic Style,” “Bureaucratic culture and art: The palace circle and the ‘painter pashas’,” “Court painting and the last ‘chief painter’: The Painter of His Majesty the Sultan Fausto Zonaro,” “Religious Culture and the World of Beliefs,” “Self-Portrait,” “Academic art education and the figure,” “The first ‘nudes’,” “An incomplete history: Minority artists of the Ottoman Empire,” “Osman Hamdi Bey: The ‘Eastern’ painter who laid the building blocks of modern culture,” “What the painter saw: Observations of social life,” “Landscape: Istanbul as a color palette,” and “Artistic Modernism and subjective styles.”
The exhibition at SSM combines academic depth with the hospitality of being in the Sabancı family's 'home' in Emirgân, through its curatorial, architectural, and graphic design. The event also informs the public about the institution's scientific research and conservation projects, conducted under the name 'Beyond the Visible,' a collaborative effort.
This initiative stems from a series launched 10 years ago when SSM received funding from Bank of America's Art Conservation Project program. With its multidisciplinary and inter-institutional approach, this project series, driven by a strong public mission, is realized through the collaborative work of expert staff and research laboratories from Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Sabancı University, Koç University, Istanbul Technical University, and Istanbul University.
'Beyond the Visible' aims to examine the works in the collection not only from an aesthetic perspective but also through their materials, techniques, and production processes. The studies, which began with Osman Hamdi Bey in 2018 and continued with the works of Abdülmecid Efendi in 2021, continue in this edition with the scientific analysis and conservation process carried out on Hikmet Onat's double-sided painting.
Accordingly, in the first stage of the projects, the underlying layers of the paintings are examined using X-ray imaging techniques. Then, through Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, the pigments contained in the paints used by the artist are determined. For each painting and each color, the formulas of the pigment molecules are compiled to create a database.
A significant part of the research also consists of the chemical analysis of the organic material (canvas, cardboard, paper, etc.) on which the work is made. These materials are examined with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to obtain information about the origin of the cellulose they contain, the plant-based raw materials used, and the production techniques.
X-ray imaging techniques provide information about the structure and paint composition beneath the painting's surface. These images not only help assess the painting's physical condition but also offer clues about the artist's techniques. This academic approach reveals the distribution of metal ions in the paint and allows for tracing the direction and intensity of the artist's brushstrokes. By making visible any alterations made by the artist and traces of past restoration interventions, it reveals the transformations the painting has undergone over time. In a way, the "memory of the canvas" becomes visible and explainable.
One of the masterpieces subjected to this multidisciplinary initiative at SSM is one of Osman Hamdi Bey's rare mosque compositions. Known for producing a relatively small number of landscape paintings, this artist and archaeologist created these works in the 1870s, according to art historical sources. In the SSM exhibition titled "Beyond the Visible," the artist's landscape composition "Mosque" depicts a street flanked by buildings with partially bay windows and other windows. A minaret rises against a blue sky in the background, while the composition centers around shopkeepers and customers in the bazaar.
Records indicate that Osman Hamdi Bey, who returned to Istanbul from Paris in 1868, was assigned to Baghdad in 1869 as the Director of Foreign Affairs for the Province, serving under Midhat Pasha, and lived in the city for approximately two years. For this reason, some of the artist's landscape paintings focus on the architectural environment and urban life of Baghdad. The "Mosque" painting is also thought to depict a scene from this region.
The SSM exhibition also presents visitors with "two sides" of a 1928 work by Hikmet Onat, an early modern artist. With this 'double-sided canvas,' in which she presents two representations of women from different periods, the artist records both her vision of the 'New Woman' from the early years of the Republic and, with the woman in the white dress on the other side, her awareness of the image of late Ottoman women within the context of the fashion of the time. Experts, also referring to the similarity of the woman depicted in the work to a portrait the artist created in 1917, underline the value of the work in that it brings together the evolving representations of a single woman over time.
Along with these, the permanent SSM collection exhibition, which makes the stories of the existence of artworks visible by explaining elements such as ‘Provenance’, ‘Conservation’ and ‘Historiography’ to its visitors, also conveys the message that art history is not a field based on a single perspective and that it is not a fixed and objective narrative, but a discipline shaped by changing perspectives over time. Experts convey the message that with this critical method presented in the exhibition, they aim to “examine the processes by which certain artists and works come to the forefront; and to transform historiographies based on gender, race, and cultural inequalities.”
Visitors thus have the opportunity to engage with the chronology encompassed by the SSM Painting Collection, as well as the stories behind publications such as Adolphe Thallasso's Ottoman Art: Painters of Türkiye (1914), Halil Edhem's Elvah-ı Nakşiye (1924), Sami Yetik's Our Painters (1940), Celal Esad Arseven's History of Turkish Art (1946), Pertev Boyar's Turkish Painters (1948), and Mustafa Cezar's Opening to the West in Art and Osman Hamdi (1971).
In conclusion, the event at SSM, with its depth and richness of 'plastic' exploration, offers a 'visual feast' effect, promising an opportunity to experience academic expertise infiltrating the public sphere through an interactive and civic approach. The exhibition, with its meticulous attention to detail that encourages young visitors to the collection to become not only painters but also art historians, critics, and even conservators, produces a lasting legacy that proves SSM's academic mission.
Information: https://sakipsabancimuzesi.org/sergiler-ve-etkinlikler/sergi/76
Source: https://www.milliyetsanat.com/haberler/diger/sakip-sabanci-muzesi-nde-gorsel-seker-bayrami-/23983