International Congress of Turkish Art (ICTA) is the largest and most important scientific regular event in the world dedicated to the Turkish and Turkic art and artistic culture, as well as its intercultural relations with other countries and regions.
At the same time, it is the only regular forum of this rank devoted to the Islamic art (although its thematic scope is not limited to the culture of the Muslim peoples and period).
It is a leading forum bringing together prominent and outstanding representatives of academic and museum centres in the world specializing in this topic.
The ICTA Congress has been organized since 1959 every four years, first in Ankara, and then in various countries, mainly in Europe, including Warsaw in 1983 (the 7th ICTA). Recent Congress meetings have taken place in Budapest, Geneva, Paris, Naples and Ankara.
In 2023, the 17th International Congress of Turkish Art took place, again in Warsaw.
The 17th ICTA was hosted by two organizing institutions: the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów and the University of Warsaw.
The Congress began on September 18, 2023, and its sessions continued for three days (September 19-21, 2023). It was attended by specialists from over twenty countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Lithuania, and, of course, Turkey and Poland, from academic and museum centers such as Oxford, the Sorbonne, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Berlin, Vienna, and many others.
The program included over a hundred papers and key-note lectures.
The 17th edition of the ICTA Congress held in Warsaw, provided a special opportunity to highlight the historical and cultural ties between the countries of the Central European and Black Sea regions, Turkey, Crimea and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The 17th ICTA Congress in Warsaw took place during the centennial celebrations of the Republic of Turkey, with which the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939) established and maintained close relations. The Polish state, reborn in 1918, continued the tradition of Polish-Turkish cooperation, which, after the loss of independence in 1795, embodied not only the beautiful romantic legend of the envoy from Lehistan awaited at the sultan’s court, but also the real participation of Poles in building modern Turkey in the 19th century.
The proceedings were accompanied by presentations of collections related to the subject of the Congress at the National Library of Poland and the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw.
The Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów presented an exhibition entitled “This is the Great Light and the Key of Paradise. Hymns from King Sobieski’s Tatar villages”– the first museum presentation of this kind, devoted to the unique cultural phenomenon of the old manuscripts and literature of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars and its links with the historical Turkic culture and the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This exhibition was made possible in particular thanks to cooperation with the Lithuanian National Museum in Vilnius, which provided valuable relics of this writing.
In the next two days (September 22-23, 2023), participants of the Congress had opportunity to visit collections of Turkish and Oriental objects in the Princes Czartoryski Museum and the Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow, and then monuments of the historical settlement of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars in the Podlasie region.
