| SALT | |
| Established: | 2011 |
| Founder: | Vasif Kortun, Garanti Bank |
| Location: | SALT Beyoğlu Istiklal Cd. No:136 Beyoğlu, Istanbul Turkey SALT Galata Bankalar Cd. No:11 Karaköy, Istanbul Turkey |
SALT is a Turkish contemporary art institution. It was started by Vasif Kortun and Garanti Bank in 2011, and has exhibition and workshop spaces in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey. It combines the previous activities of the Garanti Gallery, the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre and the Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center of the bank. It is one of the six members of L'Internationale, a confederation of European art institutions; the other member institutions are the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, in Slovenia; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, in Spain; the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in Barcelona, also in Spain; the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen in Antwerp, in Belgium; and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.
SALT has three exhibition spaces, all owned by Garanti Bank: the former headquarters of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Galata, Istanbul; a former apartment block, the Siniossoglou Apartments, in Beyoğlu, Istanbul; and a former guest-house of the Ottoman Bank in Ulus, Ankara.
In 2012, the artist and curator Didem Özbek staged her project He was working on a project in order to open a watermelon exhibition at Salt Galata, drawing on Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s story Bir Karpuz Sergisi [A Watermelon Exhibition].[1]