Necdet Alpar Mask Müzesi

About Necdet Alpar Mask Müzesi

The İzmir Mask Museum, officially Konak Belediyesi Necdet Alpar Mask Müzesi, is a small boutique museum in a side street of Alsancak run by Konak Municipality. It opened on 10 May 2011 as Turkey's first mask museum, in a restored historic house built in keeping with İzmir's Levantine architecture. It was the municipality's second boutique museum. The collection of more than 300 masks, built up largely through donations, notably from Hicri Tuncalı, is arranged in five sections: ritual masks, theatre masks, Anatolian masks, death masks, and "Those Who Left Their Mark". The last includes masks of figures such as Atatürk, Mehmet Âkif Ersoy, İsmet İnönü, Âşık Veysel, Nazım Hikmet and Attilâ İlhan, and the museum also holds the death mask of the writer Aziz Nesin. The Anatolian selection shows Kalo Gağan and Kose Geli mask costumes still worn in ceremonies in Anatolia. The museum runs mask-making workshops for children and young people. Entry is free. The city's tourism portal lists it as open 09:00 to 17:00, closed on Sundays and Mondays.