Pera Museum continues welcoming foreign visitors on weekends

Istanbul’s Pera Museum, one of the most prominent art and culture stops in the metropolis, continues to bring joy to art lovers with its exhibitions six days a week. Wanting to continue welcoming visitors from abroad, the Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation museum will keep its doors open for tourists on the weekends, despite the weekend curfew in place as part of new measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic which excludes foreign tourists.

Tourists visiting the museum will have the opportunity to see the collection exhibitions, Osman Hamdi Bey’s famous “Tortoise Trainer” painting or “Miniature 2.0” exhibition, which brings together contemporary miniature interpretations of artists from different countries.

Among the exhibitions, "Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters," "Anatolian Weights and Measures," and "Coffee Break" exhibitions bring together selected works from the collections of the Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation.

Visitors will find the opportunity to examine the ambassador portraits from the 17th-19th centuries, while also witnessing their role in the art scene at the "Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters" exhibition. Prominent painter Osman Hamdi Bey’s masterpiece "Tortoise Trainer," as well as portraits and landscapes he produced in different periods, also welcomes guests in the section that is dedicated to his life and work.

The Anatolian Weights and Measures collection exhibition, meanwhile, presents objects that have been used in the Anatolia region for nearly 4,000 years. The "Coffee Break" exhibition, prepared with works from the Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics collection, presents the rituals shaped around this "magic fruit" that reached the Ottoman lands from Yemen in the 15th century, through Kütahya ceramics, which contributed to the development of coffee culture in Turkey.

Pera Museum's current temporary exhibition "Miniature 2.0: Miniature in Contemporary Art" displays a rich selection focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting with the works of 14 artists from different countries, including Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. Hamra Abbas, Rashad Alakbarov, Halil Altındere, Dana Awartani, Fereydoun Ave, CANAN, Noor Ali Chagani, Cansu Çakar, Hayv Kahraman, Imran Qureshi, Nilima Sheikh, Shahpour Pouyan, Shahzia Sikander and Saira Wasim are among the artists whose works are on view until Jan. 17.

The museum will be open to foreign guests between 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time on Saturday and between 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

In line with the museum's hygiene and social distancing measures, a limited number of visitors are accepted in the exhibition halls while the museum shop, Artshop, and the cafe, Pera Café, offers only a takeaway menu.