International opening | Arter, Istanbul

Arter, a contemporary art museum, moved to its new building in the city’s Dolapdere district in September. Since 2010, the museum had been operating from premises on Istiklal Street, where it hosted exhibitions along with talks, performances and workshops.

Arter’s new home was conceived with the aim of cultivating a vibrant cultural hub in Istanbul, making contemporary art accessible to the community. Designed by Grimshaw Architects, the building comprises gallery spaces with varying ceiling heights, performance halls, learning areas, a library, a terrace, a conservation laboratory, an arts bookstore and a cafe. 

A multi-disciplinary events programme is planned that will feature a range of music, film, performance and digital arts and, where possible, will be in dialogue with the collection and exhibitions. 

The careful design of the building means such events can be held in the two performance halls but also throughout the museum itself. A learning studio will run alongside this, providing space for hands-on activities and facilitating dialogue around contemporary art.

The inaugural programme features seven exhibitions, four from Arter’s own collection and three by other artists. 

Melih Fereli: It all started back in 2005. Ömer Koç, the chairman of the Koç Group and Arter, said to me: “Melih, we have been spending a lot of money on arts and culture, but we’re not really sure whether we’re spending in the right way.” 

So I was invited to make an evaluation of the group’s activities. I suggested that the biggest opportunity in Turkey was in the field of contemporary art and, as part of the action plan, I joined the group as a full-time arts and culture adviser. In the old building, from 2010 onwards, we had exhibitions, commissioned new works and provided encouragement to the artistic community here, which helped increase artistic production. 

The vision was to bring artists and audiences together through a celebration of today’s art, in all its forms and disciplines. We wanted to create an inviting cultural hub, where you didn’t get the feeling that you didn’t belong. Some contemporary art institutions very much impose themselves on you and you think: “This is too much for me. I feel slightly intimidated.” 

The design of the building had to make sure that it doesn’t make you feel like you need to be a whizzkid to go in. Although our collection of contemporary visual art is our backbone, we strive to connect with other disciplines. The building has the facility to cater for all these – we can have a rock concert, but we can also have theatre and dance. I’m a singer by trade, and because I come from a festival management background, this multi-disciplinary vision translated into the building. 

When you’re building such a complex space in a very urban location, it’s an upheaval for the community. You can’t have huge lorries coming in and out all the time. Our gallery spaces have flexible ceiling heights too – from 4.5m to 9m to 17m. So from that point of view, the construction was not easy. But there will be a lot of cross-fertilisation between disciplines because of the capabilities of the building. 

It has turned out to be a beautiful design. The facade is made of convex and concave rhombuses, and in between there are pearlised tiles, which change colour slightly as the Earth rotates. It’s so subtle, but it lets the facade come alive – and it’s wonderful to look at.

The old building was small. It was on four floors, with only 800sq m of gallery space. The new building is 20 or 25 times the size of what we had previously.

We have seven exhibitions, four of which are curated from our own collection. With the other three, one is a mid-career artist, Inci Furni, exhibiting new works that we have commissioned (She Waited For A While). Another is a solo exhibition by one of the leading figures of Turkish contemporary art, Ays¸e Erkmen, who has made a display called Whitish. 

For the third exhibition, we host French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. It features three grand concert pianos that make sound and move, and the loudness of the sound and the speed of movement is according to the speed of wind on our terrace, detected by an anemometer. It brings the outside into our building through art, which is absolutely fantastic. 

The learning programme has to make sure that those who are born inquisitive can access activities to interpret the age that we’re living in through art. It also aims to facilitate dialogue around contemporary art by providing the opportunity to explore interrelationships between the various contexts that it provides. For instance, we have a percussion room. 

I remember as a child, my mother used to teach me how to tap my own body to create different sounds. So in this percussion room, we have instruments, but we can also show our kids that you can make noise and sounds with almost anything, including our bodies. We have also created a youth council.

We think that eventually, they will want to bring ideas of what the expectations of the younger generation might be from us. So the language that we speak is not hierarchical. It’s very embracing and that’s reflected in our guided tours and the language in our audioguide, too. It’s a comprehensive approach.