Çağdaş Cam Sanatları Müzesi

The Contemporary Glass Arts Museum opened on 1 December 2007 and is presented as the first contemporary glass arts museum in Türkiye. It was founded through the cooperation of Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality, Anadolu University and the Friends of Glass Group. It stands among the Odunpazarı houses, right next to the Odunpazarı Modern Museum. The building is one of the mansion-style houses built facing Odunpazarı Square as part of a cultural centre project of the Metropolitan Municipality. Turkish Wikipedia writes that these houses were built in their original style but with a reinforced concrete frame. English Wikipedia says the museum was created by renovating three historic houses, so the sources differ on the nature of the building. The City Memory Museum, opened in 2012, is in the same group of buildings, and the provincial culture directorate calls it the City Museums Complex. The signs of the two museums hang side by side on the pink-painted mansion facade. The City Memory Museum presents an oral history archive made up of nine themes on touch screens in two large halls. After the glass works, you can stop there too to hear the recent past of the city told by the people of Eskişehir themselves. The museum displays works by Turkish and foreign artists made in techniques ranging from hot glassblowing to cold forming. According to the Culture Portal, the collection includes works by 58 Turkish and 10 foreign artists. The Odunpazarı Municipality guide notes that the works are pieces the artists produced in their own studios and donated. English Wikipedia writes that works donated by Japanese, Polish, Latvian and German artists are also on display. According to the provincial culture directorate, the works are shown in three halls. According to Wikipedia, the halls are arranged over two floors around a central courtyard. The same source records that the museum also has a glass workshop and a theatre hall. The guide stresses that the museum's opening in Anatolia, where glassmaking was born, carries special significance. According to the same guide, this museum placed Eskişehir among the few cities in the world with a glass museum. When the United Nations declared 2022 the International Year of Glass, the museum joined a collaboration organised by the Museum With No Frontiers platform. In this project covering 39 countries, including Türkiye, some selected works of the museum can be viewed online. Because glass works change with the light, look at them in the halls without hurrying and, if possible, by walking around the piece. The same piece can show a different colour and depth depending on where the light comes from. Seeing thin-walled blown vessels side by side with cold-formed, cut and polished blocks is the most instructive part of the museum. The provincial culture directorate's page states clearly that photography is allowed in the museum. The same page shows the museum as closed on Mondays with paid admission; check prices and hours before you go. There are other glass-related addresses in Odunpazarı, and it is worth not confusing them. The caravanserai of the Kurşunlu Complex holds a hot glassblowing workshop and a glass arts centre, and it hosts the International Odunpazarı Glass Festival. A separate Glass Arts Museum opened by Odunpazarı Municipality on İmamzade Street in the Dede neighbourhood shows works produced during the festival. This one, by contrast, is the Metropolitan Municipality's museum and stands on Türkmen Hoca Street. Those who want to watch glass being blown live can walk on from this museum to the workshop in the complex. To reach the museum, you can use the EsTram Atatürk Lisesi stop shown on the Odunpazarı Modern Museum's directions page. You can also walk here from the city centre along Hamamyolu Avenue. The Ministry's promotion platform suggests stopping at this museum right after visiting the Odunpazarı Modern Museum.