The city I was born in is hosting the 10th annual International Istanbul Biennial, the contemporary-art festival held every odd year with "more than a hundred artists and artist collectives from three dozen countries" as reported by Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker. Lucy Cunningham, a critic for Bloomberg News says, "Istanbul was voted as 2010 European Capital of Culture in part because of the biennial." No matter what the event, or the eventual excuse, I will always have a special place in my heart for Istanbul, even though as Orhan Pamuk confesses, "the new and opulent Istanbul of today is not the melancholy city I knew as a boy."
