News

On June 3, 2022, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, Pera Museum, Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul, and Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies, Columbia University hosted the international symposium Cultural Encounters: Istanbul and Refugees from the Russian Empire (1919-1923)

Program

10:00am | Welcome

Özalp Birol (Pera Museum)

Ipek Cem Taha (Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul)

10:15-11:15am | The Encounter in Context: Istanbul Under the Armistice

Chair: Holger Klein

• Valentina Izmirlieva (Columbia University), “The Four Paradoxes of Istanbul’s Beyaz Ruslar Moment”
• Vladimir Alexandrov (Yale University), “Frederick Bruce Thomas and Being Black in Constantinople”
• Edward Kasinec (Hoover Institution, Stanford University), “American Elite Philanthropy, Anna V.S. Mitchell and The Constantinople/Istanbul Russians, 1920-1929”

11:45am-12:30pm | The Byzantine Legacy Rediscovered

Chair: Valentina Izmirlieva

• Holger A. Klein (Columbia University), “From Russia to Byzantium: Thomas Whittemore’s Intellectual Formation and the Work of the Byzantine Institute of America”
• Sergey A. Ivanov (Moscow Higher School of Economics), “Byzantium as Seen by the White Russians in Constantinople”

1:30-2:30pm | Artists in Transcultural Dialog

Chair: Vladimir Alexandrov

• Ayşenur Güler (Independent Researcher, London) [Via Zoom], “Findings on Gritchenko’s Sojourn in Istanbul (1919-1921)”
• Ekaterina Aygün (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich), “Union of Russian Painters in Constantinople (1921/1922-1923) as an Émigré Artists’ Collective”
• Nadia Podzemskaia (ITEM, CNRS-ETS, Paris), “Constantinople/Istanbul in the First Half of the 1920s, through the Eyes of the Émigré Artists from the Russian Empire”

3:15-4:00pm | Spotlight: Iraïda Barry – A Meeting of Two Archives

Cengiz Kahraman (Istanbul Photography Museum) and Valentina Izmirlieva present two archives of Iraïda Barry’s life and work – one in Istanbul, the other in New York

4:00-5:30pm | Roundtable Discussion (Closed Doors)

For more information please visit:

https://harriman.columbia.edu/event/conference-cultural-encounters-istanbul-and-refugees-from-the-russian-empire-1919-1923/