Beyond The Apparent

The cataloging and display of the collection coincides with 1990. When the Central Bank of the Turkish Republic decided to introduce its own collection, the works were hung in different areas of the bank. All the works preserved at the center and the branches in the country were identified following a thorough study by Zeynep Yasa-Yaman; they were photographed, and inventoried along with the biographies of the artists. Aiming to add the artistic production from the 1950s to the 1990s to its collection within certain guidelines, the Central Bank continued to make new acquisitions and organize exhibitions between 1991 and 1994 with the help of its Art Board that included Bediz Demiray, Hasan Ersel and Ali Artun.

The foreword of the catalogue pointed to the importance of the transformations that determined the middle and end of the century in the history of modernism, as well as the studies on modern Turkish art. Identified as merely a beginning, one –and perhaps the most important– expectation of the 1950-2000 collection was to recognize the need felt for the archaeology of other modernities and identities in a modern world defined by Eurocentric movements during a period in which the relationship between center and periphery in art was being redefined. Through its collection, the bank emphasized the significance of a new art historiography and demanded to be musealized. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey shared its collection with the public for the first time through the exhibition “1950-2000” opened at the Atatürk Cultural Center in Ankara between 12 January and 12 February 1994. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue comprised 111 works by 41 artists, encompassing nearly half a century that extended from the end of World War II to the 1990s.