Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM) will be hosting the exhibition In Praise of God - Anatolian Rugs in Transylvanian Churches between April 19 - August 19, 2007. 41 rugs Western Anatolian rugs from 16th -18th centuries, mostly selected from churches and museums in Romania and Hungary will be on display in this exhibition sponsored by Yünsa.

The exhibition, which brings together a selection of rugs for the first time at SSM since the exhibiton in Budapest in 1914, is a collaboration between the Romanian Institute of Culture, the National Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu, the Evangelical Church A.C. of Romania, Romanian Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, the Bucharest Museum of Art Collections, the Hungarian National Museum and the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art and SSM.

With this exhibition, several types of “Transylvanian” rugs, of which few survive in Turkey,  are temporarily returning to the land where they were originally woven. The use of rugs made for Muslim prayer to decorate the walls of Christian churches, and the preservation of large numbers of these rugs in Transylvania, create an interesting example of fusion and also an indication of the universality of art, which recognizes no borders, languages or religions.

Another textile art, “Kaitag Embroideries” at SSM…

The exhibition Kaitag Embroideries, Textile Art from Daghestan, with 47 embroideries unique to Kaytag, a particularly rugged region of Daghestan, will run concurrently at SSM. The art of Kaitag, produced in one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions of the world, speaks to people of diverse cultural traditions, with its embroideries decorated with symbols from a myriad of cultures including those of the polytheistic pagan world of the remote past. The Kaitag embroideries, dating from the 16th century through to the 19th century under Ottoman influence, presented in 1994-95 at L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Deutsches Textilmuseum, Krefeld, Germany, is now meeting the artlovers in Istanbul.