Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery

The Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery were inaugurated on October 1, 2009 and has already been seen by 30.000 visitors.

The Sakıp Sabancı City Museum aims to display and promote the urban formation and culture of life in the city of Mardin, while thr Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery aspires to establish a modern and contemporary art platform in Mardin, through temporary exhibitions.

Dilek Sabancı ArtGallery will host an exhibition titled “Nature, Man and the Sea – With Works Selected from the Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum Collection” for one year. The exhibition includes 75 works by 47 artists and shines light on the history of Turkish painting from its beginnings to recent times, through works by artists such as Hikmet Onat, İbrahim Safi, Şeref Akdik, Abidin Dino, Adnan Çoker, and Selma Gürbüz, comprising a vast period.

The building housing the Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and the Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery was commissioned during by the Governor of Diyarbakır Hacı Hasan Paşa to an architect of Armenian descent Sarkis Elyas Lole, in 1889 as cavalry barracks. The ground floor accessed through the southern gate served as the stables. The barracks subsequently served as Gendarme Headquarters, Military Induction Office, Gendarmerie and, between 1991 and 2003, as a tax office.

Many individuals and institutions have contributed to the formation of the Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and the Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery. In the year 2000, under the leadership of ÇEKÜL, the preliminary work to transform this historical structure into the Mardin City Museum began and through the intermediary of the Mardin born Istanbul Governor, Muammer Güler, discussions took place with Sakıp Sabancı resulting in a decision for cooperation.

On 28 March 2006, the “Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery Protocol” was signed by Mardin’s then-Governor Mehmet Kılıçlar and the President of the Sabancı Foundation Board of Trustees, Güler Sabancı. And in a ceremony attended by Güler Sabancı and Dilek Sabancı, the restoration work on the museum building formally began on 26 June 2006.

Before and during the construction and restoration processes undertaken by the Sabancı Foundation, previous governors of Mardin Temel Koçaklar and Mehmet Kılıçlar, as well as Hasan Duruer who was appointed to the governorship in December 2008, followed the project closely, and played influential roles in the achievement of the end result of the work. At every stage along the way up until the inauguration of the museum, the Offices of the Governors of Mardin and Istanbul, the Mardin Municipality, MAREV, and people of Mardin have contributed significantly to the success of the project.