This year, we are delighted to have successfully completed the sixth “Contemporary Art and Curating” Seminar Program in collaboration of Open Dialogue Istanbul and Akbank Sanat.
As we leave behind the sixth “Curating Contemporary Art Seminar Program”, it is impossible not to reflect on how much has changed since the program’s initiation in 2019. Shortly after the program began, we encountered the pandemic, which caused many changes in both our personal and professional lives. The most significant of these was the shift to conducting the seminars via Zoom, allowing participants from different cities and countries to join the program.
Our connections with the alumni continue to strengthen, and thanks to the Professional network that has emerged, our alumni create internship and/or professional opportunities for subsequent alumni or participants, and collaborate on various projects. In addition, our alumni now have the opportunity to participate as speakers in our program, thanks to their experience and the positions they have reached in their professional lives. It is also a great source of pride for us to be greeted by our graduates who are working in various positions and successfully fulfilling their duties at the Cultural and Cultural Institutions throughout Istanbul.
Of the 19 participants accepted to our program, which took place between November 2024 and September 2025, 16 successfully completed the program. This year, applications came from candidates living in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, and Nevşehir in Turkey; and from Toronto/Canada and Berlin/Germany abroad.
The participants’ formation fields varied from architecture, computer science, mathematics and art history, visual arts, communication and design, political science and international relations, economics, urban and regional planning, art and culture management and curatorial studies, sociology, museology, business administration, graphic design, philosophy, literature, history, and psychology. Never-the-less, they expressed their “Intentions” – inspired by the Zeitgeist and personal issues—and managed to put forth a coherent discourse through their individual graduation projects at the end of the program.
Their finishing project topics included: being a nomad; the personal and Collective relationships artists establish with belonging, identity, and memory; the mask of time; encounters; forms of seeing and representation; artist’s labor; the feeling of shame in a social and cultural context; the city as a space of memory; forms of not seeing; mapping invisible routines; focusing on being in the moment rather than consuming; practices of the self; thinking about home through belonging and memory; seeing the invisible; and the regime of equations.
We whole-heartedly congratulate our graduates who successfully completed this challenging program requiring great effort, concentration, and hard work.
On this occasion, We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Akbank Sanat Management, who, through their collaboration, made it possible to take this program to a different level and to ensure its sustainability; to our speakers who added value to the program with their presence; and to the institutions for their support of the program.
Billur Tansel
Open Dialogue Istanbul
“Curating Contemporary Art” Seminar Program Director
“Curating Contemporary Art” is a seminar series combining theory and practice, organized in collaboration with Açık Diyalog Istanbul and Akbank Sanat.
The sixth edition of the program took place between November 2024 and September 2025. Its primary goal is to establish a comprehensive, internationally oriented, and sustainable curatorial program while creating a prestigious educational platform in Turkey that offers both theoretical and practical insights into exhibition-making and its ideological framework.
Directed by Billur Tansel, the program is designed with an educational, hands-on, and research-driven approach. The speakers are well-known figures from the international art scene, providing both theoretical knowledge and practical engagement opportunities. The program includes case studies on biennials, galleries, museums, and art fairs, offering participants valuable insights into the field.
In the final stage, each participant will develop an individual graduation project. If their overall performance and final project meet the jury’s criteria, they will be awarded a certificate of completion. Throughout the program, internship opportunities are provided in collaboration with various institutions, enabling participants to gain real-world experience.