Shipping nightmare for an historic yalı
By John Scott | April 8, 2018
Of all the houses on the Bosphorus that had to be struck by the Vitaspirit, a 74,000-ton, 225 metre cargo ship yesterday afternoon, did it have to be the Hekimbaşı Yalı? And not only that but the most historic part of the house. Every creaking floorboard, every inch of its...
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News
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istanbul
By Monica Fritz | March 30, 2018
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Mike Berg arrived in Istanbul shortly after the 1999 earthquake. However, our conversation started with a passionate description of his ranch and the peacefulness he felt in total silence.
Mike Berg, gouache, 2018 A father of four and newly a grandfather, Berg delights in moving between his three worlds, a...
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Contemporary Art, Design
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Hale Tanger’s ‘Under’ and other highlights on Alserkal Avenue
By Tim Cornwell | March 24, 2018
The first impression of
Under, the Dubai art installation created by the Turkish artist Hale Tenger, and her long-time collaborator musician Serdar Ateşer, is that someone has put a tree in a box. The box in question lies in Alserkal Avenue, a striking but treeless zone of leading Middle Eastern...
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Contemporary Art, Exhibitions
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istanbul
By Cornucopia UK | March 16, 2018
Katie Nadworny & Alison Luntz, 'Dreamspace 1', 2016, Pigment Fine Art Print (35mm), 50x70 cm As
Cornucopia’s Online Arts Editor, I spend much of my time visiting and reading and writing about exhibitions all over Istanbul. But I am an artist as well– a photographer working in analogue, with old...
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istanbul
By Cornucopia | March 11, 2018
Congratulations to Patricia Daunt.
The Palace Lady’s Summerhouse and other inside stories from a vanishing Turkey has gathered two more glowing reviews from writers impressed by the author’s rare combination of passion and precision. Patricia Daunt has spent ‘most of a lifetime exploring Turkey – as walker, rider, knower of...
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Books
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By John Scott | March 11, 2018
Very happy to see glowing reviews of Patricia Daunt's Palace Lady's Summerhouse this week, in
The Times Literary Supplement and April edition of The World of Interiors. Yasmine Sealle, writing in the TLS (Red Brown to the Horizon)
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istanbul
Monica Fritz meets a pioneer for whom ‘creativity is power’
By Monica Fritz | March 8, 2018
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A star in the international contemporary art world, İnci Eviner has done much to transform Turkish contemporary art. She spoke to me of her great hope for the future as we drank tea in her high-ceilinged loft studio, hidden in the back streets of Hasköy on the Golden Horn. If...
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istanbul
Üsküdar’s ancient planes
By Monica Fritz | March 4, 2018
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Deep in Üsküdar, up on a hill overlooking the sea next to the famous barracks where Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and the dying of another pointless war, lies the Baroque Selimiye Mosque and its garden, now stark and into the pre-spring pruning season. John Freely describes the garden as...
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istanbul
By Andrew Finkel and Monica Fritz | February 26, 2018
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Turkish cuisine is enjoying a new wave of popularity in Britain but for the last decade residents of London’s Hampstead have been nurturing deep affection for a modest but careful ‘lokanta’ at the entrance to the Heath. Zara takes its name after the small district in the eastern province of...
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istanbul
It's not for the faint-hearted but Monica Fritz finds poetry in Distant Constellations at !F
By Monica Fritz | February 24, 2018
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Shevaun Mizrahi's film
Distant Constellations is a poetic rendition of life, hope and dreams portrayed in two different Istanbul realities, through conversations with the elderly in the Bomonti Sisters of the Poor home and construction workers building a skyscraper next door. Mizrahi herself is of mixed descent, Turkish and American,...
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istanbul
Monica Fritz meets Salih Demirci, director of Cano
By Monica Fritz | February 24, 2018
Salih Demirci's first film
Cano is a story of a schoolteacher named Ibrahim and his search for a missing friend, Cano. Ibrahim is portrayed beautifully by the director himself who is also a schoolteacher. A portrait of a lost man and a man lost. The search for a friend became...
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istanbul
The !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival delivers surprises
By Cornucopia UK | February 22, 2018
This week, I walked into a movie blind. The !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival is ongoing through this weekend, and I’ve been determined to catch as many film screenings as I can fit into my schedule. This time, I showed up at the cinema alone and in ignorance. I hadn’t...
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istanbul
By Cornucopia | February 17, 2018
It is with utmost sadness that we must report the loss this week of Ergun Çağatay, one of Turkey's great photographers (portrait by Ali Bayram). Ergun Çağatay captured numerous iconic photographs of the Bosphorus and Anatolia, but his most celebrated legacy will be his magnum opus,
The Turkic Speaking Peoples,...
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istanbul
Important NPG portrait needs conserving
By Cornucopia UK | February 17, 2018
The National Portrait Gallery in London is trying to raise £6,900 to conserve an important painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the eighteenth-century poet and author of
Travels in Turkey, which inspired many European writers and artists, such as Ingres, not least for her description of her experiences of a...
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istanbul
From projections to GIFs, this exhibition elevates innovative art
By Cornucopia UK | February 14, 2018
On one of these grey Istanbul winter days, I took the metro way out to Maslak to chase a rumour about a particularly bright and exciting exhibition. Spiraling two floors down in Orjin Maslak and turning a sharp corner, I entered a large white room that flickered and flashed with...
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istanbul
The Kadıköy Cinema
By Monica Fritz | February 11, 2018
Slightly down the street from The Süreyya Opera house, hidden away in a
pasaj cluttered with gaudy shops, is the wonderful Kadikoy Cinema, built in 1967 and in store for some unknown changes. This week you can still see Fatih Akın's latest film,
In the Fade, and enjoy the cinema,...
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istanbul
Monica’s meanderings
By Monica Fritz | February 3, 2018
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The once rusting St Stephen of the Bulgars in Balat has opened its doors again after years of silence and then restoration. This extraordinary structure now gleams from tip to toe, with the Fener/Balat weekend crowds of local tourists pouring in. The church was made of cast iron in Vienna,...
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istanbul
A memorable London must-see
By Cornucopia UK | February 3, 2018
The mid-19th century Alphabet of London includes this entry, and shows the importance of the British Museum's collection from the Lycian city of
Xanthos. Elgin's marbles don't get a mention. This comes from the Bishopsgate Institute in London. Xanthos features in Barnaby Rogerson and Rose Baring's article on the Lycean...
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istanbul
A cornucopia at The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair
By Cornucopia UK | January 25, 2018
The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Winter Fair in London’s Battersea Park is in full swing, with 150 exhibitors putting a huge variety of items on display. In the upstairs mezzanine the gloriously colourful world of LARTA, the London Antique Rug & Textile Fair, spreads out its wares. Pictured here is...
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istanbul
A Sunday afternoon at the splendid Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi Yalı
By Cornucopia UK | January 17, 2018
Hekimbaşı Salih Efendi Yalı perches like a queen’s ruby underneath the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, the object of envy for casual boaters who dream of residing in summer mansions. From the back, it hides behind the stone wall that rims the main seaside road past Anadolu Hisarı. With the clouds...
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bosphorus,
istanbul
