Online Presentation:
Gazi Arts-Crafts Department From 1932 to 1973

Gazi Education Institute in Ankara, established three years after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, was assigned to train teachers who were equipped with all necessary skills to exercise their profession in conditions of hardship. The Institute’s Arts-Crafts Department developed a curriculum around the concept of “work” with a pedagogical approach that emphasized “learning by doing.” Combining fine art studios of painting, graphics, and modelling together with applied arts studios of wood, metal, and cardboard works, students were brought up as artist-teachers capable of producing with diverse materials. The Institute’s approach to linking art to both work and profession as part of the overarching political and social mobilization, which was viewed essential to the modern republic, played a significant role in the practices of the graduates. Focusing on the period when the Department was opened in 1932 and until when the Institute’s boarding school was rescinded in 1973, an online presentation of the SALT exhibition Idealist School, Productive Studio (2018-2019) is accessible via Google Arts & Culture.