Sadberk Hanım Museum

A Heartfelt Passion, the Sevgi Gönül Calligraphy Collection (May 26–July 25, 2004)

Reunited After Centuries: Works of Art Restored to Turkey by the Sadberk Hanım Museum (December 4, 2005–February 28, 2006)

A Treasured Memory: Ecclesiastical Silver from Late Ottoman Istanbul in the Sevgi Gönül Collection (April 15–July 2, 2006)

Prehistoric Figure Paintings (November 4–26, 2006)

The 150th Anniversary of the Crimean War (December 9, 2006–February 25, 2007)

Çatma and Kemha: Ottoman Silk Fabrics (April 15–June 10, 2007)

Ancient Drinking and Libation Vessels (December 8, 2007–March 30, 2008)

The Centenary of the Second Constitutional Monarchy (June 20–July 27, 2008)

Tailors to the Court: M. Palma-D. Lena-P. Parma (November 27, 2008–January 11, 2009)

Dance of Fire: İznik Tiles and Ceramics in the Sadberk Hanım Museum and Ömer M. Koç Collections (April 12–October 11, 2009)

Women’s Costumes from the Late Ottoman Era: The Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (May 7–December 28, 2010)

Dynasty and the Camera: Portraits from the Ottoman Court (January 8–May 29, 2011)

Images in Clay: Ancient Terracotta Figurines in the Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (November 18, 2011–May 20, 2012)

Hand Skills Delight the Eye: Ottoman Embroideries in the Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (December 7, 2012–August 4, 2013)

Traces of Ancient Ages: Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (December 6, 2013–May 25, 2014)

Shoes, Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (November 27, 2014–May 31, 2015)

Jewel: Enamelled and Jewelled Objects in the Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection (December 3, 2015–May 31, 2016)

Silver and Salt: Early Photographs from the Ömer M. Koç Collection: 1843-1860 (May 25–October 31, 2017)

Kütahya: The Sadberk Hanım Museum Kütahya Tile and Ceramics Collection (March 8, 2018–November25, 2018)

*All exhibition catalogs have been published.

Altun, Ara et al., Türk Çini ve Seramikleri/Turkish Tiles and Ceramics,1991

Anlağan, Çetin and Bilgi, Önder, Protohistorik Çağ Silahları/Weapons of the Protohistoric Age, 1989

Anlağan, Çetin et al., Sadberk Hanım Müzesi/Sadberk Hanım Museum, 1995

Anlağan, Tanju, Sadberk Hanım Müzesi Kalıplı Kaseler ve Kabartmalı Kaplar/Sadberk Hanım Museum Moldmade Bowls and Related Wares, 2000

Bakar, İsmail, Sadberk Hanım Müzesi Yazma Eserler Kataloğu Hüseyin Kocabaş Koleksiyonu (Sadberk Hanım Museum Written Works Catalog Hüseyin Kocabaş Collection), 1997

Bakar, İsmail, Sadberk Hanım Müzesi Kütüphanesi Yıllıklar Sâlnâmeler, Nevsâller ve Takvîmle Hüseyin Kocabaş (Sadberk Hanım Museum Library, Hüseyin Kocabaş with Annuals, Yearbooks and Calendars), 2008

Carswell, John, Çin Seramikleri: Sadberk Hanım Müzesi Koleksiyonu /Chinese Ceramics in The Sadberk Hanım Museum, 1995

Çağman, Filiz, Kat'ı-Cut Paper Works and Artists in the Ottoman World, 2016

Donbaz, Veysel, Sadberk Hanım Müzesi’nde Bulunan Çiviyazılı Tabletler/Cuneiform Texts in the Sadberk Hanım Museum, 1999

Hart, Kimberly (ed.), Giving Back the Colours: Josephine Powell Collection, 2007

Hart, Kimberly (ed.), Kilim Örnekleri/Examples from Kilims, Josephine Powell Collection, 2007

Öztuncay, Bahattin et al., İkinci Meşrutiyetin İlanının 100’üncü Yılı/100th Anniversary of the Restoration of the Constitution, 2008

Tekin, Oğuz, Sivas Definesi: VI. Mithradates Dönemi Pontos ve Paphlagonia Kentlerinin Bronz Sikkeleri/The Sivas Hoard: Bronze Coins of Pontos and Paphlagonia from the Reign of Mithradates VI, 1999

Tekin, Oğuz, Sadberk Hanım Müzesi Antik Sikkeler Kataloğu/Catalog of the Ancient Coins in the Sadberk Hanım Museum, 2003

Tezcan, Hülya, 19. Yüzyıl Sonuna Ait Bir Terzi Defteri/A Late 19th Century Tailor’s Order Book, 1992

Üçok, Ayşe, Geçmişe Bir Yolculuk (Journey to the Past), 2004

* The museum has also published the Sadberk Hanım Museum annual entitled Palmet between 1995 and 2004.

My wife Sadberk Koç always welcomed my social projects, and institutions I founded and encouraged me. “They will live on after you, and bring blessings on your memory,” she used to say. When she was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the prospect of death preyed on her mind, she frequently voiced a fear of “being forgotten.” One day she said, “I don’t want to be forgotten. I want those precious old objects I’ve collected all my life to be exhibited in a museum bearing my name. Please help me on this issue.”

After she passed away, my children and I thought long and hard about her wish. I owned an old-style waterfront mansion in Sarıyer, known as the Azaryan Mansion, built at the turn of the twentieth century. Experts studied this four-story Ottoman-European mixture and declared it suitable for conversion to a museum. It had 1,200 square meters usable area. Restorations and alterations were carried out as needed. It was equipped with advanced fire prevention systems without compromising the timber character. These preparations took some four years. At long last, the Sadberk Hanım Museum was opened by the then Minister of Culture Cihat Baban on October 14, 1980. I was relieved to have carried out my wife’s wish.

My second daughter Sevgi Gönül put her shoulder to it, and worked passionately during these preparations. The Sadberk Hanım Museum has changed and developed enormously in the intervening six or seven years. The acquisition of the Hüseyin Kocabaş Collection in 1983 enriched the museum with 9000-year-old Anatolian artifacts. The Sadberk Hanım Museum is already a major culture and arts center in Istanbul and Turkey. The rooms and halls of the country’s first private museum open to the public display silver objects, jewelry and ornaments, examples of Turkish embroideries from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries, Kütahya and İznik tiles from the same time and Turkish costumes, as well as Neolithic, Early Bronze Age, Hittite, Phrygian, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Seljuk, Byzantine and Ottoman objects. The museum also hosts cultural events like exhibitions, concerts, conferences, seminars and commemorations. It also participates in exhibitions and cultural events abroad. In no time at all, when the need to expand the display area arose, the building next door was purchased; construction started last year.

I believe my wife Sadberk Koç’s soul will feel at peace now. This museum will live with her name, grow even richer in the future and convey our shared feelings to the future. The only thing that gives us peace here and in the afterlife is the knowledge that we have allocated our assets to benefit the generations after us.

Collecting Turkish and Ottoman objects began as an accidental hobby for Sadberk Hanım, but in time grew into a disciplined, exacting passion. She frequently visited the Grand Bazaar in search of new arrivals. And the merchants got to know and respect her. As her hobby developed into genuine expertise, Sadberk Hanım became a hawk-eyed collector. She not only knew about new works of art but also what they were worth. Occasionally the children would be taken along to these Grand Bazaar “expeditions;” Suna Kıraç recalls being bored out of their minds during the heated negotiations and exchanges. All the same, many years later she would write, “Mother must have passed on to all four of us her keen judgment; we all grew into collectors. So stuck was she on this vision of a museum that she didn’t leave us a stitch!”

Sadberk Hanım now had a colossal collection kept in suitcases on the second floor. She dreamt of sharing this historic heritage with the Turkish public, yet hesitated to suggest this idea of opening a museum to her husband; on the one occasion when she had tried together with her friend, writer and fellow collector Nezihe Araz, Vehbi Koç had replied, “Why would you open a museum; if you’re after charitable works, open a hospital or a school!” That was the year Vehbi Koç had secured the permit to form the Koç Foundation, so his priority was the investment in benevolent causes. Sadberk Hanım’s personal income—the rent from the Koçtaş land—wouldn’t stretch to establishing such a museum. The money sent from the Holding only covered household expenses, and Sadberk Hanım had used her personal money to collect historical objects.

Yet this vision of a museum had become a passion for her. In a will she drew up following an illness in January 1967, she had left her daughters one million liras each (with a note saying, “an extra 100,000 for Suna for her hope chest”) and set her favorite jewel aside, “place it in my museum”. She must have despaired that there ever would be a museum in her name in this will written six years prior to her death: she asked instead for “a few trinkets” she had collected to be displayed in an annex to a museum in Ankara or Istanbul, and this pavilion to be named after her. Sadberk Hanım’s wish for her husband was that he remembers her.

When she was diagnosed with cancer six years later, she wrote a new will. This time she addresses Vehbi Koç as “my life, my husband” and continues, “Our fifty years together might come to an end. God bless you and my children. Please be very happy. As for the children: they’re the best we could have hoped for. Please forgive their faults for my sake. I give them my blessings.” Her wish about the museum is as follows: “Build my museum, and leave it to Koç Holding.” Sadberk Hanım had been fascinated by the Antonis Benakis Museum in Athens. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have her name and efforts to live on in a similar establishment!

Vehbi Koç acted after her death to carry out her wishes. Strangely, legislation proved to be an issue, and it took concerted effort by the family members for a new Act to allow private individuals to establish museums. Sadberk Hanım’s will finally broke through the misfortune that had been hampering museums in Turkey, and threw open the gates of a brand new era.

The Sadberk Hanım Museum is located at the former Azaryan Mansion, the family’s summer retreat. Following the restoration by Prof.Sedad Hakkı Eldem in the late nineteenth century mansion, which has a European vernacular style with three floors plus attic, the museum was opened on October 14, 1980, seven years after Sadberk Hanım’s death.

Sadberk Hanım’s dream had come true. The Koç family soon grew passionately fond of the museum. An additional building came into use to house the Kocabaş Collection purchased by the Koç Foundation in 1983, and it was renamed the Sevgi Gönül Building. This contribution by Sevgi Gönül was in effect fulfilling Vehbi Koç’s wishes, from “an early will” just as her mother’s, in his lifetime. The building and the restoration would later win the Europa Nostra Award in 1988.