The jet-set opening of the Yarat Centre on 23 March, destined to showcase Yarat’s collection of contemporary art, added another venue to Baku’s burgeoning museum scene.
The boom can be traced to a 2007 decree by President Ilham Aliyev, issued shortly after the opening of the lucrative Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline linking the Caspian oilfields to the Mediterranean, calling for an “improvement of museum affairs in Azerbaijan”.
Much of that improvement had been overseen, and underwritten, by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, named after Ilham’s father, who ruled Azerbaijan for a decade (1993-2003) shortly after it gained independence from the USSR. The foundation’s president is Ilham’s wife Mehriban; their daughter, Leyla, is the vice-president.
Family affair
High on the foundation’s list of stated goals is promoting Azerbaijan’s culture and image. To that end it produces stunningly luxurious books and beautifully packaged CDs, and engages in goodwill sponsorship of prestige foreign projects like restoring the gardens of Versailles or reconstructing the Stadtschloss in Berlin, the planned home of the Humboldt-Forum.
The flagship of the foundation’s building programme in Baku, the Heydar Aliyev Centre, was designed by Zaha Hadid and opened in 2012 to house permanent exhibitions devoted to the late President’s life and collection of diplomatic gifts.
Hadid’s curvaceous, cavernous, 620,000 sq. ft building hosts a variety of other exhibitions, some devoted to Modern and contemporary art. A show of work by Wim Delvoye has just succeeded one on Bernard Buffet; large plastic animals by Cracking Art litter the lawn. Contemporary local art is also shown here—most recently the Fly To Baku show of Azeri art that had previously toured Western capitals, and which featured ink drawings by Leyla Aliyeva (who also edits the style magazine Baku).
More works by Leyla Aliyeva are on show in the Baku Modern Art Museum—which opened in 2009 at the initiative of Mehriban Aliyeva. She and her foundation are also behind two eye-catching buildings on Baku’s waterfront: the International Mugham Centre, which opened in 2008, and is devoted to traditional Azerbaijan music; and the vast Carpet Museum, which opened in August 2014, and is housed in a building designed to resemble a folded rug.
Called the Yarat Contemporary Art Space, the new centre stands a further one-and-half miles along the sea-front. Yarat was in need of a permanent base: one of its most ambitious exhibitions to date, entitled Zavod and devoted to work by 25 young local artists, was relegated to an abandoned air-conditioning factory on the grimy outskirts of Baku in 2013.
National pride
Yarat’s founder Aida Mahmudova acknowledges government help in obtaining and transforming the new site, a former Soviet naval building, but does not name the Heydar Aliyev Foundation as a backer, even though the First Lady is her aunt. Mahmudova is, in fact, keen to stress that Yarat is apolitical—although the centre’s opening show (until June 23) features giant photographs of Azerbaijanis by Shirin Neshat, hung alongside banners printed with their effusive expressions of national pride.
Competition with the Gulf
The date of 23 March was chosen for the opening to coincide with the end of Art Dubai: Baku keeps a close eye on the Gulf. Rivalry extends from culture to sport—Qatar may have the 2022 World Cup, but Baku will host the Formula 1 European Grand Prix in 2016.
Comparisons with the Gulf States are often to Baku’s advantage. It is a hilly, picturesque city with a temperate climate, with quirky skyscrapers complemented by a Medieval Old Town and elegant Belle Epoque buildings. Two of these, linked by a glass block in 2013, house the State Museum of Art—a mini-Louvre currently undergoing a major revamp ahead of the European Games in June. Another venerable museum building, however, the colonnaded former Lenin Museum, which opened in 1960, has been left to languish amid fusty-musty displays of theatrical memorabilia and historical documents. Its Soviet past is an unwanted distraction as Azerbaijan looks to the future.