400 years, and still trading

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Dutch - Turkish trade relations, and a good amount of Dutch art is visiting Istanbul. 

One of the exhibits is titled "Van Gogh Alive" and features projected images of Van Gogh's work on about 40 very large screens.  As you wander around the exhibit area, you feel as if you are in the paintings.  Smiles were on the faces of all attendees.  A wonderful application of modern, digital capabilities to timeless paintings.

An Australian organization put this exhibit together, and if it comes to your neighborhood, it is worth a visit. In Istanbul, the exhibit is located at Antrepo, just next to Istanbul Modern.

Up the Bosphorus, and also on the European side of Istanbul, at the Sakip Sabanci museum, is an exhibit titled "Rembrandt and Contemporaries".  This picture is not clear, but it is one of a few charts that depict the happenings in The Netherlands and in the Ottoman Empire during the 17th century.  It was interesting to see two very different cultures at the same period of time.

There are a few paintings by Rembrandt, including "The Music Lesson", ...

Vermeer's "The Love Letter", ...

"Still Life with a Fish" by Pieter Claesz, ...

and some very translucent white asparagus.  It's clear why we call them the Dutch Masters.  It would be great to know how to paint this translucency, not to mention, ...

the satin shirt and velvet robe in another painting.  Creating shine and softness with brushstrokes will be a question for my art teacher.  

These techniques are much further ahead of my current attempts to sketch in charcoal, where I still need to learn not to wipe off the right side of my picture with the side of my hand while working on the left side...

Thanks to the Dutch for wonderful exhibits, as well as a change in some museum rules.  It was nice to be able to take non-flash photos in the exhibit.  I also read that one museum was not charging admission for any visitor in a wheelchair and accompanying person.  Dutch pragmatism allowed, no doubt because of a successful 400 years together.  

Sakip Sabanci Museum

The Sabanci family is a well established industrial family in many business sectors in Turkey.  There is also a university and a museum in Emirgan, on the Bosphorus.

The museum is housed in what was once a family home, called the horse house, due to the horse statues at the Bosphorus level and also the higher house level.

The museum has an exhibit titled "Across - The Cyclades and Western Anatolia during the 3rd Millenium BC".  The Cyclades are Greek islands between modern day Turkey and Greece, which have been inhabited and have traded with coastal Anatolia (the Asian side of Turkey) for milleniums.   The large sign out front depicts one of the artifacts on loan from a Greek museum. 

There are also artifacts from several Turkish museums, all of which date to the time period 3000 BC to 2000 BC.

A map in the gift shop shows the islands.  Although unreadable in my picture, each of the white words represent an inhabited location during that time period.  A wooden boat was used by these peoples to row between the islands and the coasts of the adjacent mainlands.

The museum does not allow photography, but they do have school groups, who tour the exhibits and then work on creating their own artifact out of white clay.  Without needing to dry, the students were able to use markers to color their artwork.  When I asked in English, if I could take a picture, the heads nodded "yes" and the mouths sent the message of "yabanci"  or foreigner down the row.

The Sakip Sabanci museum is on a beautiful piece of property with views of the Bosphorus, and ...

beautiful gardens, ...

with artifacts displayed throughout.  And just when you think you might want to stretch out on the grass, ...

that spot is taken by another lovely artifact.

A stop by the waterfall and water lily pond, ...

to say goodbye to the resident frog.

More information about the museum is available at www.muze.sabanciuniv.edu   The current exhibit is on display until August 28, 2011.