For the February 2nd edition of Cumhuriyet Ankara, the weekly newspaper, Prof. Talat Halman wrote about Bilkent Library's Turkish Plastic Arts Archive under the title "A Bilkent Oasis." Most fine arts students are likely to already be familiar with this archive but it is a very extensive archive that every student who is interested in Turkish Modern Art should take the time to visit.

The goal of the archive is to gather all documents, including brochures, exhibition invitation cards, posters, reproductions, calendars, news clippings and journal articles, related to Turkish Plastic Arts which are nearly impossible to accumulate after events such as gallery showings. The archive has more than 45,000 documents and this number increases daily.

This archive is the only one of its type in Turkey, and fills a gap in modern archives in the area of Turkish Plastic Arts. You can find most documents related to Turkish Modern Artists' working in mediums including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, printings, video arts, graphics, installations, etc. Since it is the only archive of its type and everybody, including Bilkenters, can make use of this archive, it is an important resource allowing Tukish Plastic Arts to be transmitted to the next generation. Library personnel are planning to digitize the materials in the archive.

You may visit the archive between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. on weekdays and between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. on the weekends. The archive is located in the Library Art Room on the first floor of the B Block of the library and you may search for any artist or any artwork by title, author, date, etc. by choosing the Bilkent University Library Turkish Plastic Arts Archive via http://bliss.bilkent.edu.tr/search.phtml

Yeşim Şağban (IE/III)