İstanbul: Museum of Painting & Sculpture

Our plan for the first ½-day of our overnight visit to İstanbul was to spend time with friends. But we had some spare time before our scheduled meet-up. What to do? How about visiting an art museum?

There are two art museums at Galataport.

İstanbul Modern is … well the name says it … the modern art museum. It’s closed at present for a major restoration project.

The Museum of Painting and Sculpture is still a work in progress. Founded on the grounds of Dolmabahçe Palace in 1937 as Turkey’s first fine arts museum, in 2021 it moved to a restored building at Galataport. The first floor exhibits are open … and also a room dedicated to Osman Hamdi Bey, an Ottoman Era administrator who was also known as an intellectual, archaeologist, art expert, and pioneering painter … amongst his many other professional monikers.

One of the exhibits, entitled “Exhibition of the Exhibition-II,” features the original art collection from 1937 … except for items that are on loan to the Presidential Compound in Ankara (miniatures of those pieces are displayed on a wall … with the tagline of “artwork that we are unable to exhibit at this time.”)

We ran out of time today and saw only bits and pieces of the collection. But the museum is free, so we’ll return tomorrow … if we have time.Read more