Ankara'da Sanat Koleksiyonculuğu

Abstract

The subject of this master's thesis conducted within the scope of Hacettepe University Institute of Social Sciences Department of Art History is "Art Collecting in Ankara". While examining the art collections created in Ankara between 1923 and 2020, the activities of the state and private sector in the field of art collecting, the attitude of the collectors while creating the collection and their relations with the art market and the determinants of the art environment were taken into consideration. Since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, it is known that there is a desire for Ankara to be the center of cultural and artistic activities in addition to its political capital identity. In the Early Republican Period, this request was largely fulfilled under the leadership of the state, and Ankara still preserved its image as a city of culture and art in the 1950s and 1960s. It has been observed that art collecting, which started to become apparent in the 1970s with the support of the private sector and became a popular occupation in the 1980s, has been led by Istanbul especially since the 1980s. While determining the subject of the thesis, it was aimed to address the differences in the understanding of art collecting of Istanbul and Ankara within the center-periphery relations by taking the city of Ankara as a criterion and to investigate the reasons for Ankara's weakening in terms of art activities since the 1980s. The historical process of collecting art has been described in conjunction with the determinants of the art market in Turkey and Ankara focus. Within the scope of the thesis, interviews were held with art collectors, private gallery and museum administrators, academicians, and curators to examine the current situation of art collecting in Ankara. In line with the data obtained from the interviews, the factors affecting the art collections in Ankara were analyzed and the problems in the field of art collecting were identified.

As a result of the study, it was seen that there are a small number of collectors that can be defined as art collectors in Ankara and the habit of purchasing art works in Ankara is realized with a decorative perspective and does not have the collecting attitude. In Ankara, collectors and artists who have moved to Istanbul since the 1980s have found as well as art institutions that are closed or moved to Istanbul or opened branches in Istanbul. It was understood that the reason why the art environment in Ankara gradually lost its former visibility between 1980 and 2020 was that Istanbul stood out in investments in the field of art as well as in every field, with the effect of economic and political practices since the 1980s.