Guide
At İstiklal Caddesi No. 144 stands the Baudouy apartment building, a registered cultural property that has housed families and businesses since the beginning of the twentieth century and served as a bank branch from 1953 to 2016. After four years of restoration and renovation it opened on 29 October 2023 — the republic's hundredth anniversary — as Türkiye İş Bankası's museum of painting and sculpture, run under the bank's İş Sanat arm.
The display is planned from the top down. The fifth and fourth floors hold the permanent exhibition, which traces the development of Turkish painting and sculpture from the end of the nineteenth century to the present; the third and second take temporary shows. The ground floor opens onto the avenue with a café and the museum shop, and a multi-purpose space called the BlackBox runs seminars through the season and free art workshops for children.
The collection behind all this is one of the largest private holdings in the country, close to 2,800 works, and both the permanent and the thematic exhibitions are drawn from it. Among the artists represented are Osman Hamdi Bey and Şeker Ahmet Paşa; Hoca Ali Rıza and İbrahim Çallı; and Füreya Koral, Nazlı Ecevit, Kuzgun Acar together with Eren Eyüboğlu. The museum received a special commendation from the European Museum Forum at the annual conference of its museum-of-the-year award, held in Białystok, Poland, on 24 May 2025, cited for its curatorial approach, the perspective it brings to the country's art history and its contemporary architecture worked into the historic building. The collection can also be seen on Google Arts & Culture.
