Turkish EU minister holds cocktail party for All Arts fair

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

European Union Minister Egemen Bağış held a cocktail party for participants at All Arts Fair in Istanbul at which he said Istanbul had become a global art hub. AA photo

While the All Arts Istanbul fair has welcomed a total of 8,500 visitors to its preview and first day, Turkey's European Union Minister Egemen Bağış held a cocktail party for participants at the All Arts Fair in the garden of his ministry in the Istanbul neighborhood of Ortaköy, at which he said Istanbul had become a global art hub, and was becoming an international cultural capital.

“This kind of city should have been an arts capital long ago. However, in the past we experienced some bans and taboos. These taboos were very evident in arts,” he said. Noting that there was a direct relation between art, democracy and freedom of expression, Bağış said that countries with a rich democracy had a well-developed arts scene.

All Arts Istanbul is evidence of those developments, he said, adding that his ministry was very happy to be the sponsor of such a fair.

Taking place at the Istanbul Congress Center, All Arts Istanbul will offer a comprehensive range of artwork from approximately 140 participants. The fair will be presented in several sections; the first section, Classical Turkish Arts, will offer traditional works of art including calligraphy, miniatures, gilding, kat’I (Ottoman-era paper cutting), marbling, binding and tiles, while featuring 92 artists in 12 different categories. The second section, Antiques, will showcase painting, china, ephemera, jewelry, carpets, and coins. In the third section, participants including Galeri Selvin, Galeri Baraz will display modern and contemporary art. The fair, which is considered the first of its kind in Turkey, seeks to present a broad range of works from the ancient to the modern.