e-Interviews
Seza Sinanlar
PHd. Lecturer, Art Management Program, Department of Art and Design Faculty at Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul.
1. How do you describe your work to people who know nothing about art history?
Art History is field which helps us to understand the process of an artistic production, including history, sociology and many other facts regarding artists’ lives and their art works.
2. What do you like most about your current job/work/project?
The education of art history gave me an interdisciplinary and deep understanding of social sciences and human history. I always feel lucky having this rich point of view.
3. Briefly describe what your ‘typical’ day might involve?
As I’ve being mom for 17 months so my typical days are now totally parallel to my daughter’s ones! I work 2 days at home and 3 days at the university. Home days are more flexible but school days I have classes with undergraduates and graduates. Lunch times are the time to meet with colleagues and in the afternoon I have office hours and private working hours. I really like music and listen to the radio, if I’m at home or at the office my radio is always turned on. After 5 o’clock I get the shuttle for home. After diner I try to focus on my own interests, so I may read a book, newspapers or get news about actual artistic events taking place in the city.
4. What are your current research interests? And/or what do you currently spend your time looking at/listening to/involved with?
My current research field is the 19th century artistic life in Pera -Beyoglu, Istanbul. My primary source of information are the newspapers of the time. I like to go to the library of Ataturk which has the largest newspapers collection and reading the journals published in Pera in French and Ottoman Turkish.
Secondly, I am interested by a more recent topic; that of Creative Cities and Industries with regard to new cultural policies around the world.
5. What made you interested in art history?
Having a history MA. I am interested in the historical side of art, but I also like to focus on the social and psychological conditions which the artist has created work.
6. What is your sense of art history today? And what do you think the future of art history might be?
Being a happy person with her job, I love my perspective as an art historian. As a result of 21st century’s technology, people obtain many opportunities like virtual realization on computers. It is easy now to make a visit of museum and to observe many details on an art work without being there. I think that art historians today should strive to work more closely with technology and keep pace with technological developments.
7. Why do you think art history is important? And/or why is it important to you?
Art history is a major part of the history of mankind. We can’t imagine or consider a human being without her perception of art, her power to create, her role in the world. Art is the field where we face the power of the imagination of mankind.
8. What has been your most memorable art history - related experience to date?
When I saw the statue of Nike in the forecourt of the Louvre Museum from the stairs at the entrance of the Richelieu Gate.
9. Which ONE art work/object/book would you take with you to a desert island?
The book of NAZIM HIKMET RAN called “Human Landscapes from My Country”.
