New York’s Metropolitan Museum names two galleries after Koç family

New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art named two of its 15 renovated galleries in its Islamic Art section after Turkey’s Koç family, the owners of the İstanbul-based Koç Holding, Turkish news agencies reported this week.

The Koç family, who own several of Turkey’s biggest corporations, are also known for their efforts in sponsoring major art events and investing in the cultural field through the Koç Foundation. One of the family’s best known enterprises in that field is the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in İstanbul, one of Turkey’s rare industrial museums, dedicated to the history of transport, industry and communications. They also run a similarly themed museum in Ankara, the Çengelhan Rahmi M. Koç Museum.

More than 1,000 pieces from the Met’s comprehensive collection of Islamic Art return to view in the renovated and expanded suite of 15 galleries. The galleries, re-organized in accordance with geographical area, emphasize the diversity of the Islamic world, over a span of 1,300 years, underscoring the many distinct cultures within its fold, the museum announced on its website, www.metmuseum.org.

The new Galleries for the Art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia will reopen on Nov. 1 as part of the Met’s permanent installations. Koç Holding Honorary Chairman Rahmi Koç and his sister, Semahat Arsel, the president of the holding’s executive board, were in attendance at a special opening for the galleries earlier this week at the Met.

Koç told the Anatolia news agency during the opening that he was extremely pleased with the project. “This is a huge step for [the worldwide promotion of] Turkey and one that carries the Koç Foundation to an international platform. Six million people [a year] visit this museum,” he added.

The Koç galleries, renovated with support from the Koç Foundation, host a rich collection that features various artifacts from the Ottoman period along with historic handcrafts from the era such as carpets and textiles as well as weapons.

“The opening of these extraordinary new galleries underscores our mission as an encyclopedic museum and provides a unique opportunity to convey the grandeur and complexity of Islamic art and culture at a pivotal moment in world history,” said Thomas P. Campbell, the director of the Metropolitan Museum, in a statement posted on the museum’s website.

“These 15 new galleries now trace the full course of Islamic civilization, over a span of 14 centuries, from the Middle East to North Africa, Europe, and Central and South Asia,” Campbell added. “This geographic emphasis signals the revised perspective we have on this important collection, recognizing that the monumentality of Islam did not create a single, monolithic artistic expression, but instead connected a vast cultural expanse through centuries of change and influence,” he said.

via New York’s Metropolitan Museum names two galleries after Koç family.