Around Taksim

Istanbul's MoMA.

This museum is a dead-on copy of any large New York gallery space. This could be viewed either as a success or monumental failure. A success because it succeeds in perfectly aping every such New York space, and looks great. A failure because it is a copy, and not something new or unique to Turkey or Istanbul.

But this argument is probably moot, as the museum is pleasant and houses an interesting collection of Turkish modern art. When I was there the main exhibit was a retrospective of the painter Fikret Moualla, who was, according to the little pamphlet I'm looking at now, one of the most important Turkish artists of the 20th century. He lived in an out of Istanbul and Paris in the first half of that century, was frequently alone and depressed, and commited suicide in his sixties. A true Artist, then. His style was very much of his time and place, often reminding me of Chagall.

The museum also contained a cinema, at the time playing a documentary on Fikret Moualla, and a library, at the time housing everything anyone could find ever printed about Fikret Moualla. There were also a series of video installations, which had nothing to do with Fikret Moualla, and a bar/cafe, which also had nothing to do with Fikret Moualla.