Istanbul Art Exhibitions in 2026: Painting, Photography and Calligraphy at Three Museums

[TURKIYE]

Istanbul Art Exhibitions in 2026: Painting, Photography and Calligraphy at Three Museums

From January to early October 2026, Istanbul’s exhibitions brought artists’ lives, contemporary photography, museum collections and the archives of everyday life into conversation. Istanbul Modern presented Semiha Berksoy and Panorama before opening a new collection display. At Pera Museum, the Halil Paşa exhibition ran from spring into summer, followed in late September by exhibitions of painting and press photography. Sakıp Sabancı Museum brought calligraphers’ practice sheets and Yoko Ono’s work to its summer programme.

Eight exhibitions offered different ways into art: some opened and closed during the year, others were still running in early October, and some were scheduled to continue into 2027.

This overview considers their content and their connections with society and culture, providing a starting point for exploring each exhibition. An opening date in 2026 does not mean that every work was made that year. The new event might be the gathering of older material, a different presentation of an artist, or an archive becoming accessible to the public.

The library at SALT Galata in Istanbul; archive photograph dated 29 March 2024, by Mtls88, CC0. It illustrates a cultural space and does not depict one of the exhibitions discussed.

Semiha Berksoy: A Life between Stage and Canvas

Istanbul Modern opened Semiha Berksoy: Aria of All Colors on 22 January 2026, with a scheduled closing date of 22 November. More than 200 works explore the practice of Berksoy (1910–2004), whose career encompassed opera, theatre, painting, cinema and writing. These different media provide a route into her life beyond a list of separate achievements.

The exhibits range from early drawings and opera-related paintings to portraits, self-portraits and large works painted on bedsheets. Their thematic arrangement connects images with performance and the artist’s personal world. An earlier version was shown at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof from December 2024 to May 2025; the Istanbul presentation expanded it and introduced a new title and curatorial framework.

The meeting of voice and painting invites a question: how can feeling pass from one medium to another? Looking closely at a single image, a visitor might ask whether its expression, its colour or their knowledge of a theatrical scene shapes their response. Comparing these possibilities does not require assuming that every painting can be reduced to a single story.

Panorama: Photography as a Way of Constructing Place

Panorama: Dreams and Places opened at Istanbul Modern on 19 February, with a scheduled end date of 18 October 2026. It brings together work made since the 2010s by 18 artists of different generations. Its focus on photography and lens-based art includes installations, moving images, archives and applications of artificial intelligence.

Dreamlike landscapes, imagined geographies, unconventional portraits and interior spaces recur in its themes. Here, photography includes forms of artistic construction and investigation that go beyond recording a scene in front of a camera. The exhibition connects an unsettled world with places that make room for reflection, providing a shared framework for its varied practices.

One useful question is what makes a photographed place feel familiar, and what turns it into somewhere strange. A viewer might consider colour, composition or a connection with their own memories. These are prompts for observation, rather than a test with one correct answer. Looking at an image can begin before learning the name of an artistic movement or an artist’s biography.

Beneath the Same Blue: Rearranging the Collection

On 8 September 2026, Istanbul Modern opened its tenth collection exhibition, Beneath the Same Blue. It presents 230 works by 119 artists from Türkiye and elsewhere, including 43 shown for the first time. The display extends across all four museum floors, beyond the collection gallery itself. The announcement did not give a closing date for inclusion in a temporary-exhibition calendar.

The historical section follows modern and contemporary art in Türkiye from the 1940s to the turn of the millennium. Another section presents work made after 2000 through themes connecting different generations and places. Painting, video, photography, sculpture and installation address war, displacement, memory, nature, the body, identity and the city.

The blue of the title connects periods and experiences, suggesting the sea, horizons, distance and dreams. The exhibition’s distinctive contribution lies in rearranging a collection and opening up relationships within it. A museum can create a new exhibition from its own holdings by changing the question that brings works together, or allowing two pieces to enter a dialogue across differences in time and subject.

This approach suits visitors seeking a broad perspective before concentrating on an individual artist. Choosing one theme, such as the city or nature, makes it possible to compare its treatment in a painting, a photograph and an installation. The works on view in 2026 should also be distinguished from names marked in the artist list as appearing from 2027 onwards: that note concerns a later stage of the programme.

Halil Paşa at Pera: A Painter’s Journey across Cities

By the Water: The Life and Art of Halil Paşa ran at Pera Museum from 5 March to 23 August 2026 and had closed by the time of this overview. It examined a painter (1852–1939) associated with the transition from Ottoman painting to the early Republic. His practice combined academic training with an impressionist sensibility and contributed to the development of outdoor painting in Türkiye.

The exhibition followed his life chronologically, encompassing Istanbul, his art studies in Paris in the 1880s and his years working in Egypt. Loans from institutional and private collections appeared alongside documents, photographs, sketchbooks and family archive material. Portraiture, still life and landscape were explored through his handling of light and colour.

This format allowed a life to be read through both artworks and documents. Two questions could be considered separately: how did the painter depict a city, and how did that city enter his life? Bringing them together invites reflection on travel, learning and observation while recognising each painting’s individual construction. As the exhibition had ended, it appears here as part of the record of artistic activity in 2026.

The historic Ramazanoğlu Medrese in Adana, used as a cultural centre; archive photograph dated 4 February 2025, by Basak, CC0. It does not depict one of the Istanbul exhibitions discussed.

Frank Bowling: Painting as Transformation

Pera opened Frank Bowling: Creation and Destruction, with Interruptions by Francis Bacon and Victor Willing, on 29 September 2026. Its scheduled closing date, 31 January 2027, falls in the following year. Curated by Alistair Hicks, this first presentation of Bowling’s work in Istanbul places it alongside work by the other two painters, inviting comparisons between their intersecting and divergent paths.

The selection includes paintings from the Map series, made between 1967 and 1971, and more recent works, including Mother’s House Revisited from 2026. Memory, abstraction, geometry and spontaneity in Bowling’s practice are considered in relation to chance, control and continued experimentation.

An approach to this kind of painting is to look first at the distribution of colour and space, before trying to identify recognisable objects everywhere. Abstract painting allows attention to relationships between form, surface and movement. This is a suggestion for looking, rather than a claim about how everyone responds: one visitor may notice order while another sees change or tension, and they can compare the features behind those readings.

The Republic Behind the Scenes: Everyday Life in a Press Archive

The Republic Behind the Scenes opened at Pera on 29 September 2026, with a scheduled closing date of 28 March 2027. It draws on the press photography archive within the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation’s photography collection. The archive described by the exhibition contains more than 20,000 photographs. This is the size of the source archive, rather than the number of photographs displayed in the exhibition.

The material dates from the 1920s to the early 1950s. Most photographs were taken in Istanbul by Cumhuriyet newspaper photographers Selahattin Giz and his mentor Namık Görgüç; the archive also includes work by other photographers. The exhibition considers flawed or damaged shots and images excluded from the usual selections for publication. They offer views of street life and of people less visible in more familiar photographs.

The difference between a published picture and a shot left in an archive helps explain this approach. Selecting one frame creates a narrative; returning to other material opens further questions. Reading images critically means attending to what is known about their context and what remains uncertain. The Istanbul Research Institute organised the exhibition for its twentieth anniversary, with İdil Çetin and Ahmet Ersoy as curators.

Calligraphy at Sakıp Sabancı: Traces of Work in Progress

Sakıp Sabancı Museum has presented Karalamalar, Meşkler, a display of scribbled exercises and practice sheets, since 9 June 2026. It remained open without an announced closing date at the time of this overview. Ottoman calligraphic exercises from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries come from the museum’s Arts of the Book and Calligraphy Collection and the Kubbealtı Academy Culture and Art Foundation’s collection.

The calligraphers represented include Ahmed Karahisarî, Hafız Osman, Mahmud Celâleddin, Kazasker Mustafa İzzet and İsmail Hakkı Altunbezer. The material reveals working processes between first attempts and accomplished arrangements of letters. A sheet’s value also lies in the practice it preserves: small decisions about repetition, proportion and placement.

These pages offer a starting point for thinking about artistic learning. Repeated attempts leave evidence of their maker’s labour, even when never intended for display. Someone who reads Arabic may find the letterforms a familiar entry point, then turn towards rhythm, form and spacing. Understanding words offers one route into the work; noticing how they are composed offers another.

Yoko Ono: Ideas and Participation in the Museum

Sakıp Sabancı Museum opened Yoko Ono: Insound and Instructure on 25 June 2026, with a scheduled end date of 27 December. Its 67 works span more than seven decades, including conceptual art, instruction pieces, performance, film, installations and participatory works.

The artist’s studio worked with the museum and MUSAC, the contemporary art museum in León, Spain, on a presentation suited to the spaces and curatorial frameworks of the two institutions. The works occupy galleries and the garden, extending into the Arts of the Book and Calligraphy Collection. Imagination, perception, memory, peace and human relationships are among their themes.

This programme invites attention to what a work asks of its audience as well as what it places before them. Participation, or imagining an action, can provide a way into an idea. A useful first step is to identify the kind of work: is it a film to watch, an installation whose elements can be examined, or instructions to read? Distinguishing these forms helps make sense of the different media while leaving room for personal responses.

Exhibition Dates and Status at a Glance

Exhibition and museum	Dates and status in early October 2026	Focus
Semiha Berksoy — Istanbul Modern	22 January–22 November 2026; ongoing	A life across the arts
Panorama — Istanbul Modern	19 February–18 October 2026; ongoing	Photography and imagined places
Halil Paşa — Pera	5 March–23 August 2026; ended	Painting, biography and archives
Karalamalar, Meşkler — Sakıp Sabancı	From 9 June 2026; ongoing, with no closing date announced	Calligraphers’ practice sheets
Yoko Ono — Sakıp Sabancı	25 June–27 December 2026; ongoing	Ideas, performance and participation
Beneath the Same Blue — Istanbul Modern	From 8 September 2026; ongoing, with no closing date announced	A new reading of the collection
Frank Bowling — Pera	29 September 2026–31 January 2027; ongoing	Painting and experimentation
The Republic Behind the Scenes — Pera	29 September 2026–28 March 2027; ongoing	Press photography and everyday life

Future closing dates indicate the scheduled end of each exhibition. The table shows how September added displays extending into the following year, while an exhibition that closed in August can still be included among the events of 2026 without being presented as a current visiting option.

How Do These Exhibitions Connect with Society?

Comparing the exhibitions opens three separate questions. The first concerns biography: what becomes visible of an artist’s life when a work is compared with related material? The second concerns images: how does viewing a visual work differ from using it as evidence of an event? The third concerns institutions: how do the selection and arrangement of material shape our route to understanding it? These questions apply to different exhibitions without requiring agreement on a single interpretation.

Images also have limits. An old scene may arouse curiosity about clothes or street details, but conclusions about a society require more information than one frame. Similarly, an unfamiliar work is not necessarily meaningless, and a recognisable element does not settle its interpretation. Recording observations before separating them from interpretations can help: “I see a recurring colour” describes something visible; “I feel it connects parts of the work” offers a reading that can be discussed.

This approach can also enrich a shared visit. Each person can choose one work, explain a detail that caught their attention and ask what others noticed. The conversation need not become a contest over knowledge of artists’ names; it can rest on features present in the work. Different interests, experiences and memories may produce different readings, making comparison an opportunity to reconsider a first impression.

Following Art through Works, Documents and Ideas

A personal route can begin with any of these forms: an artist’s life, an experiment in photography, a museum collection, archival material, calligraphic practice or conceptual work. Choosing a subject brings focus to looking and helps retain the relationships between works afterwards. Practical questions include: what materials were used? How are the elements arranged? What does the title add? What information is needed before making a historical judgement about the work?

Exhibition news records a cultural event with a particular place, duration and body of material, then allows discussion to extend beyond its opening date. Comparing media and considering a work in context offer ways of understanding what museums present to the public. When returning to one of these exhibitions, checking its current status comes first. The next step is looking at the works themselves and developing a reading that can be explained and discussed.

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