Dogancay Museum

My first acquaintance with Burhan Dogancay's works goes back to 2000. I was taking a Basic Design course in my first year in faculty of architecture and went to see a retrospective exhibition of Dogancay in Istanbul Art Gallery. I was amazed by his works, especially the collages on wood of his street wall and door series. It was the very first time I had seen mixed media used in such an expressive way that shed light on what I was - kind of - accustommed to seeing. The task given to the class for this exhibition trip was to create a card that would describe the artist and I had prepared a very small scale wooden door with a collage from his works on it.

While searching for another exhibition by him a few days ago, I found out that there was actually a Dogancay Museum in Istanbul, in Beyoglu; to be honest, I was quite angry with myself, for the museum had been there all along for 5 years now and I had never heard of it.

Burhan Dogancay is a Turkish - American painter and photographer. His most well known works are urban walls which he was fascinated by, as the barometer of the society. Taken from the website of the museum;

...Urban walls have a special meaning for Dogançay: they serve as a testament to the passage of time, reflecting social, political and economic change. They also bear witness to the assault of the elements and to the markings left by people. This, according to Dogançay, is what makes urban walls monuments to the human experience and his oeuvre an archive of our time.



Dogancay Museum is Turkey's first modern art museum. It is in a 150 years old building and it houses about 100 works of both Burhan Dogancay and his father, Adil Dogancay. I must admit that I was quite dissappointed by the restoration; before you enter, you feel like you are about to witness a blend of modern art with the history of the building, however, I think the only original piece of the building left is the façade and the door; and yet, the PVC windows, the horrible stair parapets which my friend described as those used in badly designed shops today, the unnecessary addition of an elevator, had completely spoiled the whole ambiance. My expectations of a Picasso Museum-like gallery-house were not met at all. It still was a good experience, for seeing those works after 9 years was a nice retrospection in itself.










Adil Dogancay's easel.









The room for Adil Dogancay's works.

The museum is open daily between 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Admission is free. If you get there at about 3 p.m. you may be served a nice cup of tea in the cold environment of its cafe. There is a very friendly staff; do not be afraid of being bothered even if they insist on showing you around, you only have to spend about 5 minutes with them while they are giving the same information actually written on the walls.