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Istanbul Modern is one of the most important art museums in Istanbul, Turkey. It’s located at the Galataport development.
Introduction to Istanbul Modern
Istanbul Modern, officially the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (İstanbul Modern Sanat Müzesi) is Turkey’s first contemporary art museum. It focuses on art from the late 20th century created by both Turkish and international artists.
The museum opened on December 11, 2004, in Antrepo #4, a former maritime cargo warehouse with 8,000 square meters (86,000 square feet) of floor space. In 2018, it temporarily relocated to the Union Française building in Tepebaşı while its new home was constructed as part of the Galataport development.
On May 4, 2023, the museum reopened in the current building, which is near the site of its original location. It’s 5 stories high with 10,500 square meters (113,000 square feet) of floor space and was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The building features educational workshops, a library, a cinema, event space, and a design workshop.
Visiting Istanbul Modern
Istanbul Modern is open daily except Mondays. Admission for foreigners is 750₺ for adults, 470₺ for students and seniors age 65+, and free for kids under 12 (as of April 2025). Cinema tickets are 250₺ (as of April 2025). In addition to the exhibits, there’s a restaurant, café, and gift shop. Visitors must pass through the security checkpoint for Galataport to gain entry to the museum. Check the official website for more info.
Runner
The first work of art you’ll notice is actually outside the building. Runner, a 6-meter-tall sculpture created by Tony Cragg in 2017, stands in front of the entrance as part of a long-term loan to the museum.
Permanent Exhibition Gallery at Istanbul Modern
The permanent exhibition gallery is the largest gallery at the museum. It features works by prominent Turkish artists and is a great introduction to their work. I’ll highlight some of the artists below.
Fahrelnissa Zeid
Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901-1991) was an important abstract artist and one of the first female students at the Academy of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi), now Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. She’s best known for large-scale abstract paintings. Her work didn’t garner interest in the West until the 1990s. On display was My Hell, one of her most famous works.
Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu
Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (1911-1975) was a poet and artist who arrived in Istanbul in 1927. He studied and taught at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts with a short stint in Paris from 1931 to 1936. In addition to painting, he was skilled at mosaics, ceramics, calligraphy, and engraving. His work was inspired by Anatolian village life and folk literature. On display was Coffeehouse, which shows influences of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) from his time in France.
Neşet Günal
Neşet Günal (1923-2002) studied at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts under Léopold Lévy (1882-1966) from 1939 to 1946, graduating at the top of his class. He then went to France and worked in the studios of André Lhote and Fernand Leger. The figures in his paintings take on the characteristics of the natural environment in which they’re depicted. On display were Earth Man and Scarecrow IX, which represent traditional agriculture in Anatolia.
Ara Güler
Ara Güler (1928-2018) was the most internationally known photographers from Turkey and among the best in the world. He captured the spirit of Istanbul and life in Anatolia as well as photographing many celebrities and archaeological sites. On display were select photos he took in Istanbul in the 1950s and 60s.
Yüksel Arslan
Yüksel Arslan (1933-2017) enrolled in the Department of Art History at Istanbul University in 1953 but dropped out to concentrate on painting full-time. He called his work arture, which is the art with the suffix of the French word for painting, peinture. In his arture, he merged writing, poetry, and painting, using his childhood experiences as inspiration. He was known for thinking outside the box and creating his own original form of expression. On display was Arture 167. The Capital XVI. (Private Property), among other works.
Burhan Uygur
Burhan Uygur (1940-1992) studied under Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts between 1961 and 1969. His paintings reflect the bohemian lifestyle he lived and depict people from his inner circle, all while paying homage to verses of poetry he admired. On display was The Door, which was on long-term loan from the collection of Dr. Nejat F. Eczacıbaşı (1913-1993).
Mehmet Güleryüz
Mehmet Güleryüz (1938-2024) studied at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts from 1958 to 1966, graduating at the top of his class. He was also a professional actor and taught art for several years. On display was Race Car.
Burhan Doğançay
Burhan Doğançay (1929-2013) learned art from his father, Adil Doğançay (1900-1990), and Arif Kaptan (1906-1979), both accomplished painters. He was fascinated by urban walls, photographing them in several cities around the world and integrating them into his work. This evokes a more emotional response and is seen as social and political art rather than abstract art.
On display was The Magnificent Age, which is one of his most well-known works. It combines images of Ottoman sultans and art he found in newspapers and magazines and was first displayed at the Istanbul Biennial in 1987.
İnci Eviner
İnci Eviner (b. 1956) graduated from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and has been exhibited all over the world. Many of her works are multi-layered pieces that originated from her drawings. According to her official website, she “has developed a unique mode of expression regarding the different states of womanhood, gender, and the politics of identity in their collective, political, and sociocultural aspects” and “defines womanhood as a field of limitless possibility that does not fit any single image or concept”.
On display was Skinless. The description of the work is:
I have no skin, my skin has abandoned me. I am now vulnerable, defenseless and fragile. It left with my memory, with all my memories of my birth and of the wound I received when I jumped over a fence to savage my prey. It stole my milk and the stream from which I drank. It was my memory, my native land. It engraved my landscape on its jacket, it carried the nerve endings to the copper tables. I was left alone with my identity’s other face, with a stranger. I spoke to her of my projects, tried to seduce her by explaining the benefits of progress. It put on the leather I handed her… I am now more naked than before, unable to fill the space between skin and leather, so I grew wider, overflowed into places. These places were full of unfulfilled promises, the place of the stranger within me who displaced my body and wrecked my home, who toppled my kinship to the world.
Gülsün Karamustafa
Gülsün Karamustafa (b. 1946) studied under Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 1969. She draws from her own personal history to create “a multilayered narrative by combining, in the social historical context, all the external factors that emerge around her and influence her life such as migration, gender, boundaries, and memory”. Istanbul is a frequent subject of her work.
On display was NEWORIENTATION, which was first featured in a warehouse in Tophane for the 4th Istanbul Biennial in 1995. It sheds light on women who went missing in Istanbul, focusing on brothel workers in Galata and their encounters with sailors. The work consists of sailor’s ropes fastened from the ceiling to the floor using large eyebolts. The colorful ribbons tied around the ropes represent missing women. Each ribbon is stamped with the name of a woman and the dates she was last seen.
Bedri Baykam
Bedri Baykam (b. 1957) is credited with spreading the Neo-expressionist movement in Turkey after 1980. He created works with strong political and social messages, and starting in 1986, he started combining photography and painting. His work draws attention to “the West’s appropriation of the history of modern art and its cultural imperialism over the Third World”.
On display was Ingres, Gérôme, This is My Bath. It was first exhibited in 1987 at the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamam as part of the 1st Istanbul Biennial. The installation featured water running down the wall of the hamam along with music and scents. Baykam adapted Turkish Bath (left side) and Grand Bath at Bursa (right side), both by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), and secretly included himself in the painting. The work “may be interpreted as an insider’s answer or appeal to the way foreign painters, who couldn’t enter a bath or harem, were captivated by them and imagined them in erotic terms, from an Orientalist point of view”.
Balkan Naci İslimyeli
Balkan Naci İslimyeli (1947-2022) studied at the Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1972. He went on to work in Florence and New York, and became a professor in 1996. He worked with painting, photography, writing, sculpture, and performance art. The themes he addressed included personal and cultural identity, tradition, time, memory, gender, communication, and existence.
On display was Ash 1 from the series Air-Water-Earth-Fire, and Straitjacket. In Ash 1, he depicted his worries of a dying world, with a swing hanging above footprints in ash symbolizing the loss of humanitarian values. In Straitjacket, he used two photographs of himself on a straitjacket with calligraphy-style writings.
Also on display was Everything is Nothing, Nothing is Everything. In the work, İslimyeli depicted himself as a wanderer holding a staff. He’s pictured in all sorts of landscapes in a quest to find the meaning of “everything” and “nothing”.
Azade Köker
Azade Köker (b. 1949) studied ceramics and industrial design in Istanbul and Berlin. She “uses different forms of expression to explore identity, belonging, city, representation, nature, and women, while adding a diversity of materials to her artistic career that began with ceramics”.
On display was The Landcape of Silence, which “explores the coexistence of reality and illusion”. From a distance, the work presents the image of a forest. Get closer, however, and you’ll notice the forest is made of skulls, representing unpredictability and events beyond human control.
Aydan Murtezaoğlu
Aydan Murtezaoğlu (b. 1961) graduated from the State School of Applied Fine Arts Department of Painting in 1991. She works with conceptual installations, painting, and photography, exploring “the socio-political movements and its effects on contemporary Turkish society” and how “systems of power operate in everyday life”.
On display was Untitled, which was first exhibited at the 6th Istanbul Biennial in 1999. It depicts a woman sitting on a bench facing the Galata Tower. The landscape is blurred and tilted to the left and her head is tilted as well. According to Murtezaoğlu,
It is an effort to rethink how conceptual boundaries of right and left can become blurred, even trade places. due to consecrated ideologies founded on the problematic of identity and citizenship both during and prior to Türkiye’s capitalist modernization process.
Halil Altındere
Halil Altındere (b. 1961) earned his Master of Fine Arts from the Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts. He effectively uses humor to explore political and social structures. His work includes sculptures, videos, and photographs, and cover subjects such as subcultures, nationalism, power, gender, and militarism.
On display is a work from the Dancing with Taboos series, which, through ID cards, explores identity and what it represents through politics and social structure. In this particular work, he depicts the global and local effects of the expansion of communication by swapping out ID photos for photos of young people facing each other and talking on their cell phones.
Temporary Exhibition Gallery at Istanbul Modern
The temporary exhibition gallery displays works of art on a rotating basis. I’ll cover a few artists who were on display during my visit.
Tony Cragg
British sculptor Tony Cragg (b. 1949) has been a leading name on the sculpture scene since the 1980s. On display was Thicket, which invites the audience to”reflect on the conceptual relationship between space, experience, and sculpture”. There were also selected works from the Glasstress project, which was inspired by a departure from traditional glass production on the island of Murano in Venice.
Alicja Kwade
Polish artist Alicja Kwade (b. 1979) incorporates materials she has found, such as coins, pipes, mirrors, and bike wheels, to convert them into new forms and change their meanings. Her goal is to “investigate fundamental questions that theoretical physics, philosophy, sociology, and other branches of science have been seeking answers to for hundreds of years”.
On display was Hypothetical Figure III, which is “an intertwined copper pipe system shaped like a trumpet”. It’s based on scientific drawings of the Wormhole Theory developed in 1935 by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and Nathan Rosen (1909-1995). The lump of granite atop the sculpture passes through the pipes, representing space and time, and eventually becomes a pile of sand.
Anselm Kiefer
German artist Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) intertwines “his own narrative and the grand narratives of Germany’s past”. He covers a wide variety of themes, from “mythology, chemistry, and poetry to religion, nature, and mathematics”. In his work, he incorporates objects such as glass, dirt, straw, branches, clothing, and books to reflect the weight of his subjects.
On display was Morgenthau Plan, which was based on the plan put forth by the United States in 1944 to partition and demilitarize Germany and convert it into an agricultural country. The sunflowers represent Germany’s agricultural ideals before postwar industrial development.
Karin Kneffel
German artist Karin Kneffel (b. 1957) uses photorealism to create a “multidimensional atmosphere that feels removed from reality”. On display was Untitled, which depicts a room with a nostalgic view to the Bosporus. The house was actually built in Ortaköy by German architect Bruno Taut (1880-1938) in 1938. Kneffel researched what the Bosporus shore looked like at the time. The painting is part of the Bosphorus Germans series dedicated to architects who settled in Istanbul after 1900.
Lee Bull
South Korean artist Lee Bul (b. 1964) originally focused on her country’s transition from military dictatorship to democracy. She started with wearable sculptures and in the 1990s shifted to the concept of beauty. On display is Untitled, which is an elaborate chandelier made with crystal, glass, chains, aluminum, beads, bronze, and steel. Depending on the viewer, it evokes “an icy landscape, a mountain peak, or a spaceship”.
Pop-up Gallery at Istanbul Modern
The pop-up gallery at Istanbul Modern contains more rotating exhibitions. There were a few interesting works on display during my visit.
Sibel Horada
Sibel Horada (b. 1980) “focuses on the history of the personal and the collective in both urban and natural contexts, and calls into question memory, disappearance, and stories woven together in strange and coincidental ways”. She uses textual and narrative content to create three-dimensional works.
On display was Forest, which is a 38-piece installation composed of beech branches. It was produced “using a Japanese wood surface treatment technique called Shou Sugi Ban, in which a destructive treatment is used to make the wood more durable”. The method “involves burning the wood, then extinguishing the fire once all surfaces are evenly charred, thus obtaining a carbonized outer layer that protects the inner tissues not only against rot and decay, but also against subsequent fires”.
The burning represents themes such as violence, loss, and forgetting, while the installation itself is a “manifestation of the possibility of collective resistance forged through solitude, healing, and shared experience” with the “possibility and hope of making people more resilient in the face of destructive social and personal incidents”.
Güneş Terkol
Güneş Terkol (b. 1981) addresses “stories, relationships, and social conditions drawn from her own history as well as her acquaintances’ experiences”. The banners she creates provide opportunities for “people to come together, share ideas, and discuss before protesting an issue”. On display was Against the Current, which “demonstrates the struggles of women who persevere in defending their rights despite problems, injustices, and hardships”.
Photography Gallery at Istanbul Modern
The final gallery I visited was the photography gallery, which displayed some incredible photos with subjects and settings that spoke for themselves.
Terrace at Istanbul Modern
Before leaving, don’t forget to visit the terrace. You’ll be treated to some spectacular views of the surrounding area. If there’s no cruise ship in port blocking the view, you’ll also get a great look at the Bosporus.
