Clik here to view.
Byzantine boon
You could say that a Byzantine Studies Research Center at Boğaziçi University has been a long time in the making. Alexander Van Millingen (1814–195), one of the first professors at Robert College, was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pushing the boundaries of funk and jazz
My favourite bassline is, without a doubt, from Jackson 5’s hit song ‘I Want You Back’. It’s a playful, melodic and funky beat that does more than just ground the song – it makes it memorable....
View ArticleThe astonishing Zeki Muren
If you missed YapıKredi’s exhibition, Işte Benim Zeki Muren last year, spare a few minutes for this small show at Mimar Sinan University about the non-musical offereings of Turkey’s Liberace. As well...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Applications open for 2016 Moon and Stars Project grants
Artists, it’s time to flex your proposal-writing skills – applications for the Moon and Stars Project winter grants are due on January 31. Founded by The American Turkish Society in 2002, the Moon and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Good vibrations
What is a painter without paint or a brush? The ZERO: Countdown to the Future exhibition at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum more or less answers that question: a member of the ZERO art group, a network of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Expanding horizons
Sometimes a burst of colour can go a long way in lifting your spirits, especially during the bleak midwinter. So if the short days and overcast skies are bringing on the winter blues, it will do you...
View ArticleAyseDeniz’s Nirvana Project
The last time that AyşeDeniz Gökçin came to our attention, she was adapting the music of Pink Floyd for the classical piano, with a nod to Franz Liszt (see ‘Magical Movements’, Cornucopia 50). Some of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where coffee is king
The people of countless nations across the world are connected by the wonderful, enduring tradition: coffee-drinking. For millions, this universal dark liquid is an everyday treat, a comfort and a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The eye-opening evolution of the nude in Turkish art
The reclining woman’s light pink dress is disappearing before my eyes – the thick material of the ankle-length, long-sleeved dress becomes ever more pellucid until it is only an outline framing the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Theophania! Epiphany!
The Orthodox church certainly knows how to lighten what is otherwise the grimmest week of the year. I am standing on the freezing shore of the Golden Horn at Fener waiting to watch one of Great City’s...
View ArticleThe female voices of a generation
Anatolian rock is a bit of a boy’s club. Or at least that’s how it seems at first. Anyone who loves this amalgamation of folk, rock and psychedelic music is more than familiar with Barış Manço, Erkin...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pera’s coup
Is it coincidence, or the nationality of the last Jameel Prize winners, Turkish fashion designers, Ece and Ayşe Ege of Dice Kayek (see Cornucopia 44), that means Istanbul will host the fourth Jameel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deciphering Islamic geometric design
As an Istanbullu, it’s easy to take the breathtaking beauty of Islamic geometric designs for granted. To start, many of the city’s architectural gems highlight Ottoman decorative arts that are more...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Letters to the Editor: Sir Edward Barton (c.1533–1597)
In splendidly illustrating the disappearing beauties and remaining monuments of ‘Istanbul Unwrapped,’ the two most recent issues of Cornucopia’s timely and moving series have recalled how Edward...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘I can’t make love to you unless I imagine a palm tree’
So wrote Lawrence Durrell in Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet), 1958. Since arriving in Athens I have heard a curious story, told and retold in different ways. It is about the removal of the palm...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The life of the island’ – my great-grandfather’s dream hotel
There are certain benefits to befriending a pistachio trader, as Serra Taşkent discovered during one of the many childhood summers she spent on Büyükada at the Splendid Palas Hotel – built by her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘If music be the food of love, play on’
If you’re looking for inspiration, Shakespeare’s mellifluous verse is certainly a good place to start. Or at least that’s the philosophy of the Istanbul Arts and Culture Foundation (IKSV), which...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A feast for film lovers
The abundance of films at this year’s !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival can make a cinephile feel like Augustus Gloop in the Chocolate Room at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – just as Augustus...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stifling the subversive street art of Banksy
A tube train approaches a station, tracks rattling noisily, the blinking headlamps blinding and the heavy metal carriages sending tremors through surrounding structures and human bodies alike. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Travelling Treasures of King Midas
Travelling to Gordion in 1950, scholars from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) couldn’t have foreseen the treasures they would unearth. Seven years...
View Article