Talk:
Sarah-Neel Smith
Salt Galata
June 28, 2016 18.00
A 1953 Helikon Orchestra concert showing the musicians playing alongside paintings.
Photograph reproduced from: Bülent Ecevit, “Helikon,” Gergedan 17, July 1988, 150-153.
Photograph reproduced from: Bülent Ecevit, “Helikon,” Gergedan 17, July 1988, 150-153.
SALT Galata, Auditorium
This talk focuses on the ways that two important members of the 1950s Turkish art world, Adalet Cimcoz and Bülent Ecevit, addressed the political concept of participatory democracy by founding art galleries. Established in Istanbul and Ankara in 1950 and 1952, Galeri Maya and Helikon Derneği Galerisi represented two competing yet complementary visions for how Turkish democracy should unfold during the country’s first experiment with the multi-party system. Cimcoz and Ecevit’s galleries were not only commercially-driven endeavors, but were also idealistic efforts to take up the neglected responsibilities of state and municipal institutions in the Turkish cultural sphere.
The talk will be held in English with simultaneous translation to Turkish.
Sarah-Neel Smith is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where her work focuses on art of the modern Middle East, modernism in a global and comparative perspective, and histories of museums, exhibitions, and display. Her current book project, Art, Democracy, and the Culture of Dissent in 1950s Turkey focuses on the intersection of art and politics in Turkey in the post-war period, and the ways that local art galleries, painting practices, and art criticism were informed by international discourses about democracy after WWII.
Democracy in the Gallery: Adalet Cimcoz and Bülent Ecevit’s Cultural Projects of the 1950s
This talk focuses on the ways that two important members of the 1950s Turkish art world, Adalet Cimcoz and Bülent Ecevit, addressed the political concept of participatory democracy by founding art galleries. Established in Istanbul and Ankara in 1950 and 1952, Galeri Maya and Helikon Derneği Galerisi represented two competing yet complementary visions for how Turkish democracy should unfold during the country’s first experiment with the multi-party system. Cimcoz and Ecevit’s galleries were not only commercially-driven endeavors, but were also idealistic efforts to take up the neglected responsibilities of state and municipal institutions in the Turkish cultural sphere.
The talk will be held in English with simultaneous translation to Turkish.
Sarah-Neel Smith is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where her work focuses on art of the modern Middle East, modernism in a global and comparative perspective, and histories of museums, exhibitions, and display. Her current book project, Art, Democracy, and the Culture of Dissent in 1950s Turkey focuses on the intersection of art and politics in Turkey in the post-war period, and the ways that local art galleries, painting practices, and art criticism were informed by international discourses about democracy after WWII.
