Visit Art in America online for the full post.In 2001, curator Vasif Kortun, former director of Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies and curator of the 3rd and 9th Istanbul Biennials, founded Istanbul's Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center. Over the next few years, Platform offered an international residency program, visiting lecturers series, and open artists archive, all of which drew artists, curators, and scholars to the city. Locally, Platform acted as a social hub for an artist community historically devoid of a gathering place; it provided an alternate art education to that offered by Turkey's conservative fine arts universities; for some artists, it was a portal to the art world beyond Turkey's borders.
The Istanbul Biennial, founded in 1987, offered similar opportunities for exposure and dialogue on a two-year cycle. But as a permanent institution, Platform — and Kortun — has arguably influenced a local Turkish art scene more than any other.
In 2007 Platform closed its doors to the public to undergo a complete overhaul. By autumn 2011 — Biennial season around here — Platform will be reworked, renamed, and ready to transform the Istanbul art world for the second time around. By the Biennial clock, 2009 marks the halfway point of the institution's four-year revamp. Kortun is laying low during this week's Biennial, finishing up Platform's new mission statement, and continuing to work behind the scenes. I caught up with him at his office on Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul's busiest shopping street, to talk about the new "encyclopedic institution" he'll be part of, and how to deal with the growing demand for Turkish art and its history.
Turkey's preeminent hub for contemporary art will combine with the local Ottoman Bank Museum, a historical museum on Turkey's 19th and 20th century social and economic past which hosts exhibitions based in its extensive archive, and Garanti Gallery, an architecture-, and design-focused gallery also funded by the Turkish bank which supports Platform. (The bank is called Garanti - hence the catchy shared name.)
"At the end of the day it is going to be more or less an encyclopedic institution," says Kortun, discussing the Ottoman Bank Museum's research center for economic and social history, a 27,000 sq. ft. contemporary art gallery, a permanent space for "visible archives" including architectural models and plans, and a public library. Ambitious? Yes, but as Kortun points out, they are taking their time. Maybe this is a lesson learned through local observation, since SantralIstanbul, an arts and culture campus of even vaster scope, burned bright at its opening during the 2007 Istanbul Biennial and has proceeded to sputter - though not die - in the following couple years. "Here usually it is the other way around," notes Kortun. "People do a big exhibition, but we are going the other way, taking our time to build up. That doesn't mean we are going to be boring and slow."








