Türkiye İş Bank Museum reopens with a fresh look

ISTANBUL

After a comprehensive five-month renovation, the Türkiye İş Bank Museum reopened on Aug. 24 with a permanent exhibition, “100 Years of İş,” featuring the century-long history of İş Bank through documents, photographs, films and collectibles as the bank celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Located in a historical building in Eminönü since 2007, the museum underwent restoration works in order to present its visitors with a much more modern appearance and an enriched exhibition area.

Having welcomed around 2.6 million visitors and over 135,000 students to its free workshops and events, the museum now presents its permanent exhibition.

Speaking at the opening ceremony on Aug. 24, İş Bank Deputy General Manager Suat Sözen stated that the building where the museum is located was built in 1892 as an Ottoman post office and started serving as a branch of İş Bank in 1928.

“The building continued serving the Turkish economy until 2004 and was very popular with the business world in this region of Istanbul where export, import, trade and finance were very intense,” he added.

Noting that the museum, which opened in 2007, had welcomed around 2.6 million visitors by March 31, 2024, Sözen said, ““When we look at bank museums in Europe, we see that they have reached thousands of visitors annually. Therefore, 2.6 million visitors is a very large number.”

Sözen stated that they started the renovation process by taking into consideration the building, which had worn out over time, new developments in exhibition techniques and the growth of the archive with new photographs and documents.

“As we enter our 100th year, we thought there might be a way to tell our own story better. We wanted to tell the story of İş Bankası’s establishment, development, technology and transformation into today’s modern bank, and its contribution to society, with a brand-new technique. This exhibition also includes photographs to be seen for the first time. Some of the never-before-seen photographs from the İzmir Economic Congress are among them. I hope that the exhibition, which presents the economic development story of our bank and our country, will be appreciated by our visitors as well.”

Associate Professor Doğan Çetinkaya is the curator of the renewed Türkiye İş Bankası Museum, while the exhibition design was made by Pattu Architecture.

In the new exhibition area that spreads over two floors of the building, the ground floor focuses on the foundation and development years of İş Bank. There are four main sections on the ground floor where the foundation story of the bank is told accompanied by early-period documents. The upper floor of the museum focuses on technological transformation, contemporary banking and corporate social responsibility projects. The technological transformation both in the banking field and in daily life can be observed on this floor through collection pieces such as typewriters, calculators and the first computers. The upper floor also shows the bank's corporate social responsibility projects, education, environment, sports and culture-arts activities and past advertisements.

The Main Vault and Safe Deposit Box offices, which have been integral parts of the building since 1928, and the Atatürk Hall, whose decoration has been renewed based on original photographs, are also expected to attract great interest from visitors.

Visitors can explore the Türkiye İş Bank Museum daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except Mondays, at no cost. To celebrate İş Bank’s 100th anniversary, all of its museums will be open to the public on Aug. 26.