SALT (institution)


SALT is a Turkish contemporary art institution. It was started by Vasif Kortun and Garanti Bank in 2011, and has exhibition and workshop spaces in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. It combines the previous activities of the Garanti Gallery, the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre and the Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center of the bank. It is one of the six members of L'Internationale, a confederation of European art institutions; the other member institutions are the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, in Slovenia; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, in Spain; the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in Barcelona, also in Spain; the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen in Antwerp, in Belgium; and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.

Gallery spaces

SALT has three gallery spaces, all owned by Garanti Bank: the former headquarters of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Galata, Istanbul; a former apartment block, the Siniossoglou Apartments, in Beyoğlu, Istanbul; and a former guest-house of the Ottoman Bank in Ulus, Ankara.

Library

SALT Research comprises a specialized library and an archive of physical and digital sources and documents on visual practices, the built environment, social life and economic history.
Collections at SALT Research focus on the period from the late 19th century to the present day with an emphasis on Turkey -primarily Istanbul- and the geographies of the Southeast Mediterranean and Southeast Europe. The collections include visual and textual sources and documents on the art history of Turkey post 1950, the development of architecture and design in Turkey since the beginning of the 20th century, and the transformations in society and the region from the last century of the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic up until the 1990s.