Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) showcases its extensive painting collection under the title “While a Country is Changing - Turkish Painting from the Ottoman Reformation to the Republic”. The collection, containing the works of the significant artists of Turkish Painting, such as Osman Hamdi Bey, Halil Paşa, Abdülmecid Efendi and İzzet Ziya, Fikret Muallâ is exhibited permanently in the gallery designed exclusively for the exhibition. The exhibition, which has been carried out under the scientific consultancy of by Prof. Dr. Semra Germaner and Assoc. Prof. Ahu Antmen, gives the visitors a chance to oversee the historical journey of Turkish Painting.
The collection, created by additions to Sakıp Sabancı’s private collection in time, presents a wide spectrum to Turkish Painting art from a collector’s standpoint on the modernization process from the Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic. The paintings, that Sakıp Sabancı gathered through his personal interest for a certain era of Turkish Painting, gives a hint about the initial phase of the development process of the art of painting in Turkey. The exhibition also reveals the transition in the production of images and the alteration of the concepts of art and artist in Turkey.