Urla: Arkas Sanat

Those who are regular readers will remember from previous footprints the name of Arkas … the Levantine family … longtime residents of İzmir. We visited a couple of the museums they founded earlier during this year’s annual visit to Türkiye … and in previous years as well.

Urla, the site of our next stop, is about a 40-minute drive from Alsancak. We had already driven about half that distance to get to Yukarıköy, our first stop this morning. Thus our drive to Arkas Sanat in Urla was much shorter today. By 11:30a, we were parked and posing for a selfie in front of the purpose-built museum that houses a portion of the family’s collection of art … paintings, sculptures, carpets, tapestries, and more.

Mui and I visited the museum last year when we were in Türkiye for a couple of weeks following an eastbound TransAtlantic. Deniz had not been, however, so another visit was in order. The museum does not charge admission — which is quite flabbergasting … especially considering the amount, the quality, and the value of the items on display.

As we wandered around today, I made a concerted effort not to photograph the same pieces that I did in 2022. A quick glimpse at the footprint I wrote back then shows me that I wasn’t entirely successful. C’est la vie! I guess my taste in art hasn’t changed much in the interim since that last visit.

(I think I did a fairly good job of selecting different photos for this post, so if you want to see more from this art museum, you’ll find the May 2022 footprint at following link: https://findpenguins.com/8pccjefaitoru/footprin….)Read more