ACADEMY OF CAPPADOCIAN

ART CRAFT and CULTURE

Only those who have never been to Cappadocia will ask : Why should there be an Academy of Art and Culture in Cappadocia ?
Our simple answer : Because the Gheureme valley is a landscape of memory a spectacular moonlike landscape of tufa rock formations called fairy chimneys, cones, and needles which has seen been transformed into a an artscape by pre-Christian, Christian, and later Islamic populations.

Today's population is a dynamic mix of old Turkish families and European and American travelers, tourists, and settlers who are exploring the beauty of the environment to its fullest. It is in their mutual interest to have an institution that teaches children and visitors alike the importance to maintain and value this unique heritage, to see learn the environment through art and to learn art through nature.

Projectguggenheim Cappadocia is structured like a tufa fairychimney into which different rooms have been cut at different levels. We like to image it both as a natural, organic institution, and as an cultural one, a creative, imaginative and intellectual enterprise of scholars, artists , students and teachers.

At the base of that chimney will be our broad art and crafts program for
children from the surrounding villages. This is one of the most exciting
programs we have anywhere, because the entire Ghoreme valley is a spectacular outdoor museum in which hundred of churches have been hewn out of the soft rock possibly from the second century onwards and in which living quarters have been cut that conform to the social customs and needs of changing populations.

At the second level of our "chimney" will be a museum school where we hope to teach traditional crafts and how to innovate within a tradition .Here we plan to have carpet weaving and pottery, and metal work.

Finally we get to the peak- the ivory tower of the scholar where our
director, Dr. Andus Emge, himself a well known Anthropologist, will organize workshops and seminars and work with other scholarly institutions in Turkey such as IRCICA.

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