Izmir opens new art center backed by Centre Pompidou
Also this week: French flavors, urban reflections and Ara Güler’s Cannes
Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.
This week’s edition comes with a distinct French accent. In Izmir, the newly opened Lucien Arkas Art Center begins its program with Sonia and Robert Delaunay and a long-term partnership with Paris' Centre Pompidou. In Istanbul, Bardot leans further into French brasserie classics under chef Mert Seran. And at Bomontiada, Ara Guler heads to Cannes, capturing the Riviera and its celebrities in the 1960s.
Elsewhere, the city stays busy in its usual fashion: Fahrettin Orenli dissects urban suffocation at .artSumer, Mutlu Aksu turns daily life into staged unease at Galeri 77, and CI Bloom gathers the city’s galleries under one roof.
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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)
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1. Leading the week: Seventh art stop in Izmir
Arkas Mistral’s Delaunay exhibition (Lucien Arkas Art Center)
Izmir’s cultural map expands with the opening of the Lucien Arkas Art Center, launched on April 5 at Mistral Izmir. It becomes the seventh venue in Arkas Sanat’s network, which has maintained a sustained art route across the city since 2011.
Founded by Lucien Arkas, head of Arkas Holding and an art collector, the center is conceived as a multidisciplinary space, bringing together exhibitions, learning programs and different forms of artistic production. It opens with “Sonia & Robert Delaunay: The Invention of Modern Color,” a concise introduction to the French avant-garde couple who helped shift early 20th-century painting toward abstraction through color, light and rhythm.
The opening gathered figures from both Turkey and France, including French Ambassador to Turkey Isabelle Dumont and Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
The project is anchored in a five-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou, which will bring two exhibitions a year from its collection to Izmir.
“I was born and raised in Izmir,” Arkas said at the opening. “I believe this city should be intertwined with art not only through its past, but also through its present and future.” Strong words from a collector whose initial taste was 19th century, but who later quipped that “once you go contemporary, you cannot turn back.”
Le Bon described the center as “an ambitious institution in full interaction with the international cultural scene,” while Arkas Sanat’s international exhibitions adviser, Jean Luc Maeso, put the scale more plainly: “With this center, visitors will, over the next five years, have access to one of the largest contemporary art collections in Europe and the world: the Centre Pompidou collection.”
The opening display is deliberately modest, with two Delaunay works serving as a preview. A larger exhibition on color and light, drawn from the Pompidou collection, is scheduled for September.
Date: Until June 12
Location: Mistral, Bayrakli, Izmir
2. Word on the street: Bardot
Bardot: good cuisine, good bar (Bardot)
Bardot, the ultra-chic eatery at Zorlu Center, enters a new phase with chef Mert Seran at the helm. Seran reshapes the menu around French brasserie classics, executed with restraint and precision. Steak tartare, foie gras terrine and onion soup set the tone, while a strong seafood selection introduces a lighter Mediterranean balance. Designed by New York’s Roman & Williams and backed by Artisan Hospitality Group, Bardot maintains its polished, metropolitan edge. The restaurant was recognized in the 2026 Gault & Millau Turkiye guide, confirming its place on the city’s dining map.
Location: Levazim Mahallesi, Vadi Caddesi, Zorlu Center/Beymen, No: 2/208, 34340 Besiktas
3. Istanbul diary
Fahrettin Orenli’s “The Organic Cities: New York → Istanbul” at .artSumer (Courtesy of .artSumer)
Fahrettin Orenli’s “The City Genes: The Bubble in the Mind” at .artSumer turns the city into a living organism under pressure, tracing how capital, ecology and knowledge circulate and suffocate within it. Moving between Istanbul, Amsterdam and Seoul, the exhibition asks an uneasy question: Are we shaping the system, or simply adapting to it? Through April 30.
At Galeri 77, young artist Mutlu Aksu presents his first solo show, “Reality Show,” probing how everyday life is staged, filtered and internalized. Familiar objects and glossy, almost kitsch surfaces draw viewers in, only to reveal the subtle pressures shaping what we accept as real. Through May 23.
Stop by CI Bloom at the Lutfi Kirdar International Convention and Exhibition Center on April 16-20, where a tight edit of Turkey’s leading galleries — Anna Laudel, Art On Istanbul, Bozlu Art, Pi Artworks, Zilberman and x-ist — meets a younger cohort. First-time participants include Offgrid Art Project and Kun Art Space, adding a welcome edge to the fair’s polished core.
Plan ahead: The International Gastronomy Film Festival returns to Cesme on June 5-7, bringing together filmmakers, Michelin-starred chefs and industry figures for screenings, talks and curated tastings in a rare overlap of cinema and cuisine on the Aegean coast.
4. Book of the Week: ‘The Lion and the Nightingale’
Kaya Genc’s “The Lion and the Nightingale: A Journey Through Modern Turkey” is a reported journey through a country “split between East and West, between violence and beauty.” Mixing memoir, interviews and reportage, Genc travels across Turkey after the 2016 coup attempt to meet artists, writers and ordinary citizens living through its contradictions. The result is a portrait of modern Turkey that still feels painfully current. Genc continues to map the same fault lines in recent Guardian essays, including his March piece on Turkish film-makers defying autocracy.
5. Istanbul gaze
Not the Bosphorus, but Cannes: The "eye" of Istanbul takes a look at celebrities in 1950s (Ara Guler Museum)
Ara Guler, the late photographer known as “the Eye of Istanbul,” turns his lens to the French Riviera in CANNES! in a new exhibition at the Ara Guler Museum. The show brings together his photographs of Cannes and its celebrities in the 1950s and 1960s, capturing the festival city in its golden age. On view at Bomontiada from April 22 to Oct. 11.
6. By the numbers
• Turkey is aging, and women are carrying more of that burden. According to TURKSTAT, people aged 65 and over now make up 11.1% of the population, reaching 9.58 million; 55.3% are women. Among elderly people living alone, 73.5% are women.
• 11.4% of people aged 65 and over are illiterate, and 88.6% of them are women. Another 11.8% are literate but did not graduate from school, with women again making up the large majority at 78.5%.
• In 2024, labor-force participation among the elderly stood at 6.5% for women and 21.4% for men, underlining how economic independence in old age remains sharply unequal.