Dr Chin-tao Wu, Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, was invited by the Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2009, to deliver a public lecture, which drew a great deal of attention. The lecture was delivered before a packed auditorium of some 100 people, and there was press coverage from four major local papers (Birgün, Today’s Zaman, Radikal, and Aksiyon). Dr Wu also gave two interviews in Istanbul. One interview with Sibel Yardımcı, professor of sociology at the celebrated Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi in Istanbul, focused on the Istanbul biennial and the privatization of culture in general.  The interview was published in the newspaper Birgün on 27 November 2009, and received a generous full-page coverage with a front page caption. The other interview with Ebru Moçoş will be forthcoming in the January 2010 edition of Evrensel Kültü Dergisi. Dr Wu’s book, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, has been translated into Turkish, Portuguese and Spanish, and hence continues to enjoy a high reputation in academic and artistic circles in Turkey.  

During this trip, Dr Wu also gave a closing talk for the 28th Biennial of Graphic Art at International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The talk received substantial coverage by Polona Balantič on Slovenia’s public broadcasting station, RTV Slovenia. Two other interviews with Polona Balantič and Andrje Savski will appear in Objektiv and Likovne Besede (Art Worlds) respectively. The interviews focused on Dr Wu’s research on the biennials and research interests in globalization.  The latter interview was approximately 7000 words in length.