Istanbul Modern’s new building designed by Renzo Piano will open to visitors on Thursday, 4 May.
The architect’s first-ever project in Turkey, the structure spans 10,500 square metres and features a façade of 3D-formed reflective aluminum panels.
Located at the museum’s original location on the historic Karaköy waterfront, the building houses expanded permanent collection and temporary exhibition galleries, a photography gallery, the museum’s public library, a 156-seat auditorium, education and event spaces, a café and a museum shop.
Five new exhibitions will be unveiled to mark the museum’s reopening. Istanbul Modern’s most comprehensive permanent collection showcase to date, Floating Islands features more than 280 works by 112 artists and artist duos including Fahrelnissa Zeid, Ayşe Erkmen, Gülsün Karamustafa, Nil Yalter, Alicja Kwade and Laure Prouvost.
Always Here is dedicated to 11 women artists from Turkey and displays 17 works that have been added to the museum’s permanent collection through the support of the Women Artists Fund.
The museum’s photography gallery will present In Another Place, an exhibition of 22 never-before-seen portraits by Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Genius Loci surveys Piano’s architectural language and design process of the new building, while Constructing Architecture explores the construction phases as well as the relationship between architecture and photography.
The building also plays host to specially commissioned site-specific installations including a three-part work by Olafur Eliasson in the central stairway and Infinity Rooms: Bosphorus by Refik Anadol, based on real-time environmental data from the Bosphorus.
The museum’s outdoor area features a selection of major sculptures, including The Most Beautiful of All Mothers (I) by Adrian Villar Rojas, Richard Deacon’s House Version, Tony Cragg’s Runner, Anselm Reyle’s Atop an Underworld and Dust Falling, Yılmaz Zenger’s Ayça, As I See Her, and Selma Gürbüz’s Europeans.
