Before I went to Baku, I knew a lot about the city and the country. After all, I had many local friends, and Azerbaijan is not really some distant country for those living in Turkey. While I was not surprised with much when I was there, one thing did surprise me for the better. Azerbaijanis really know how to do art some justice. There are plenty of art museums all around the city, and many galleries of all shapes and sizes. You can find a decent selection of these just below, though if you are looking for something cheaper or more accessible, know that a walk in the city’s picturesque Nizami street should do the job in a clutch as well.
Azerbaijan Carpet Museum
You have probably seen this building on some social media post or YouTube video about Azerbaijan. It looks like a carpet, and it is in Baku. Unsurprisingly, it is home to a museum on carpets of the region.
While I am not a fan of carpets or home decoration of any sort for that matter, this is a very well curated museum. It is much smaller on the inside than what you may think, and thus only takes around fifteen minutes of your time. However, you get to find out a lot about how carpets are made and can even see a few Azerbaijani babushkas quietly weaving one in front of your eyes.
One of the best parts of this exhibition was just how it attempted to address all of its visitors, and I mean all of them. Other than many audio-visual aids, there were also some exhibits featuring miniature carpets next to them, ones that blind people could easily touch and enjoy, and also read more about using the braille next to it.
Azerbaijan State Museum of Art
If you are interested in more artsy art, rather than carpets, then you need to pay the nearby State Museum of Art a visit. It is cheap to enter, though the cost is lost on me, and it features two entire floors full of art. While the first floor is almost all dedicated to foreign artists, the second one is taken mostly by local ones.
Paintings and sculptures seem to take up the most room here. There are also porcelain plates, some woodcrafts, and even a few pieces of jewellery. These are spread around quite evenly, and the museum seems to lack visitors for the most part. This means that you get to enjoy the whole place yourself, at your own pace.
Heydar Aliyev Center
If that was not enough for you, be ready to be showered in art of all sorts. While this gorgeous building, the Heydar Aliyev Center, is much more than “just” an art gallery, most of its space is indeed taken up by temporary art exhibitions that excel in quality, at least they did so when I was there.
One of the more seemingly permanent exhibitions was all about local arts and handicrafts, and in fact, you could see some more carpets here. If you are not really interested in them, this smaller section should do the trick for you, and you can skip the bigger aforementioned museum.
One of the more interesting temporary exhibitions at the time was dedicated to toys of all sorts, where I found this amazing creation.
Speaking of amazing creations, there was yet another temporary exhibition, this time dedicated to the works of Yue Minjun, a Chinese artist hailing from Beijing. His work was breathtaking, usually juxtaposing an aggressively smiling man with often contradictory images.
However, there were at least three other exhibitions that I was yet to see by this point, despite it already being quite late in the day. While it is 15 AZN to enjoy this space, I have to say that it is worth every penny. I ended up spending well over three hours in this center, and I do not regret a single second of it.
While the majority of Heydar Aliyev Center is dedicated to art, as its name suggests, it is also about Heydar Aliyev himself. There are exhibitions regarding his life, achievements, death, and the gifts that he received as a statesman. There was even a video of him talking about his wife and their love life in a very cozy setting, and that was worth watching to say the least.
For another 10 AZN, you can also check out the massive classic car collection of late Heydar Aliyev. Despite not being interested in cars, I was blown away by the variety in this collection. You can find extremely old and beautiful cars like this in pristine condition. This was a delightful experience as well.
Museum of Modern Art
While we were mostly dealing with good old “normal” art so far, there is also the modern art to talk about. Thankfully, an entire museum (and an art gallery) is dedicated to it. Museum of Modern Art is a compact space that offers an almost ridiculous number of artworks, even some originals by Picasso and Dali. You cannot photograph the works by European artists, but you can take photos of local works, which is just, highly, and I mean highly, questionable.
That mattered little to me, at the end. While it was interesting to see some works by Dali and the like, what fascinated me the most were paintings like this one, which were, admittedly, not even that “modern” of an art. The oil industry on the Caspian Sea was illustrated so beautifully on a few paintings like this by local artists, and I could not help but photograph them all.
YARAT Contemporary Art Centre
Last but not least, for something truly modern, one must visit YARAT Contemporary Art Centre. This is a completely free art gallery that features one to three temporary exhibitions, depending on the time of your visit. I was lucky to enjoy three of them, though the first two relied more on audio-visual cues than the third one. This third one had to do with decolonial movement, and the trauma left by the Soviet experience, or so its description wrote.
While I was not ready to see decapitated heads of Lenin and Marx all of a sudden, that is exactly what ended up happening here. With a ton to wonder about, I wandered out of YARAT, and slowly made my way back to my hostel. While I was not so sure what to make of the latest exhibition I enjoyed, I knew one thing for sure, those that are interested in art will find a home for themselves in Baku.