I understand your reasoning on the de Kooning retrospective, but look at it this way… What MoMA does is more relevant to the thousands visiting from abroad than to the art professionals living in New York. I had a similar feeling when I visited the Istanbul Biennial. It looked like a well-curated academic exercise for curators, museum directors, art professionals visiting Istanbul, but what about the public living in Istanbul?

Thank you Mr. Kocabiyik, and your point is well taken. Indeed a complete de Kooning blockbuster will bring in lots of people from abroad, and sell lots of tickets, but for those who know the work, albeit imperfectly, it doesn’t provide an experience that enhances the viewer’s understanding of this artist in history, it merely delivers him as gospel.

In visiting the Istanbul Biennial, thanks to your generosity, I also wished there had been an effort to create more Turkish context and more content that was specific to the region. The curators chose to emphasize the “International” and academic style of today’s biennial culture. It was a shame, I agree, to be in such a beautiful and exotic city but to see art that was disconnected from the locale.

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