NEW YORK, NY.- The Turkish Consulate General in New York will present Ahmet Ertegün: A Few Things Which Began at Everett House, an exhibition curated by New York-based, Istanbul-raised curator Lara Bayer, from October 8–26, 2026. The exhibition brings together works by American and Turkish artists including Logan Criley (b. Los Angeles), Bayram Demir (b. Kastamonu, Türkiye), Jordan Doner (b. Ann Arbor, Michigan), Barış Göktürk (b. Ankara, Türkiye), Bob Gruen (b. New York City), Zachary Lank (b. Annapolis, Maryland), and Andy Warhol (b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), spanning painting, drawing, mixed media, textile, printmaking, and photography. Through new commissions, recent works, and historical works, the exhibition offers varied perspectives on Ertegün’s life, relationships, and enduring influence across music and art.

Highlights include Andy Warhol’s Mick Jagger (F. & S. II.140) (1975), from the artist’s celebrated portfolio of ten screenprints depicting Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, and a selection of Bob Gruen’s photographs documenting Ertegün among some of the most significant figures in twentieth-century music. Doner presents Ahmet & The Stones (2026), a new pastel work reflecting Ertegün’s close relationship with the Rolling Stones, alongside Rod Stewart (après Jean-Baptiste Oudry) (2026). Logan Criley and Zachary Lank contribute new oil paintings. At the same time, Barış Göktürk presents a large-scale mixed-media work, and Istanbul-based artist Bayram Demir contributes a textile work that draws on his practice across painting, textile design, and digital image-making.

The exhibition takes its title from Everett House, the Turkish Ambassador’s Residence in Washington, D.C., where Ertegün lived after his father, Münir Ertegün, was appointed Turkey’s Ambassador to the United States. While still a teenager, Ertegün began organizing jazz sessions there, welcoming musicians including Duke Ellington and Lena Horne at a time when racial segregation still shaped much of Washington’s social and cultural life. Nearly two decades after Ertegün’s death, the exhibition returns to these formative years and to a life that would extend far beyond his role as co-founder of Atlantic Records, considering through the visual arts the music, relationships, and cultural exchanges that shaped his world.

In 1947, Ertegün founded Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson, turning an early fascination with jazz and rhythm and blues into one of the most consequential careers in twentieth-century music. His brother Nesuhi joined the label in 1955 and played a central role in developing its jazz catalogue. Over the decades that followed, Atlantic became home to artists who changed the course of American popular music: Ray Charles in the 1950s, Aretha Franklin in the 1960s, Led Zeppelin in the 1970s, and later acts including INXS. Ertegün’s friendships and collaborations also reached well beyond the label itself, placing him in the company of musicians, artists, diplomats, and cultural figures across generations.





Ahmet Ertegün: A Few Things Which Began at Everett House marks Bayer’s second exhibition at the Turkish Consulate General in New York, following Metropoli, which brought together ten artists across eleven works, including three commissions. With this second exhibition, Bayer turns to a figure whose life connected many of the worlds that have long existed between Türkiye and the United States, considering his legacy through works spanning generations and artistic practices.

“Ahmet Ertegün is most often remembered as the co-founder of a major music label, but his significance extends well beyond that. He was a remarkable figure of the twentieth century whose life intersected with music, art, diplomacy, and an extraordinary network of artists and cultural figures. What interested me in developing this exhibition was the opportunity to explore that legacy through the visual arts without prescribing a single way to interpret it. The works offer very different points of entry into his life, his influence and the world around him. For me, that multiplicity feels particularly true to Ertegün himself: there was never only one world he inhabited.” —Lara Bayer, Curator.

Lara Bayer is a New York-based independent curator and art-world professional. She holds a Master’s degree in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and has experience across galleries, international art fairs, private sales, art advisory and fine art appraisal. Her professional background includes Perrotin, James Cohan, JD Malat and Contemporary Istanbul, and she currently serves as Senior Client Development Manager at Arcadia Art Consultancy. As an independent curator, Bayer has organized exhibitions at the Turkish Consulate General in New York and co-curated a group exhibition at SPRING/BREAK Art Show. She is also a USPAP-compliant fine art appraiser.

Logan Criley

Logan Criley (b. Los Angeles) is a Los Angeles-based artist. He received his BFA from New York University in 2015 and completed his MFA at ArtCenter in 2022. His solo exhibitions include Cruel Arithmetic and Pure Beauty at Harkawik in Los Angeles and New York, If the Future Isn’t Bright, At Least It’s Ours at Harkawik in New York, One Thousand American Nights at As It Stands in Los Angeles, and For Your Pleasure at New Release in New York. Criley has participated in group exhibitions including Vanitas at Nathalie Karg, Parafictions at As It Stands, Strangers Forming a Group Waiting to Kiss at Motel Gallery, and A Synthetic Wound at 41 Cooper Gallery.

Bayram Demir

Bayram Demir (b. Kastamonu, Türkiye) is an Istanbul-based artist whose practice brings together painting, textile design, and digital image-making. A graduate of Marmara University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Demir draws on his extensive background in textile and graphic design to create works in knitted jacquard fabric, translating digitally constructed imagery into complex compositions produced with specially dyed yarns. His practice incorporates symbolism, mythology, philosophy, psychology, and poetry, using textile as both a material and a painterly language.

Jordan Doner

Jordan Doner (b. Ann Arbor, Michigan) is a New York-based artist whose practice spans drawing, painting, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. His recent works draw from Old Master imagery, pop culture, digital media, and art historical references, exploring subjects ranging from classical civilization and Christian allegory to pastoralism, wildlife, and contemporary culture. Doner has exhibited at MoMA PS1, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the National Museum in Warsaw, Steven Kasher Gallery, and The Watermill Center. His work is held in collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and The Bunker Artspace.

Barış Göktürk

Barış Göktürk (b. Ankara, Türkiye) is a Brooklyn-based artist raised in Türkiye and Puerto Rico and an Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Working across drawing, painting, and sculpture, Göktürk combines found and collaged imagery with historical and mythological references to explore themes of regeneration, societal rupture, and the relationship between collective history and individual experience. He holds an MFA in Sculpture from Columbia University and has participated in programs including ApexArt, ISCP, LMCC, Yaddo, and Skowhegan. His work has been exhibited internationally, with recent museum exhibitions at the New Museum and Jewish Museum in New York, Pera Museum in Istanbul, and Frost Art Museum in Miami.

Bob Gruen

Bob Gruen (b. New York City) is one of the most influential photographers in the history of rock and roll, whose images have helped define the visual record of modern music culture. Embedded within the music scene from the 1960s onward, Gruen became known for an extraordinary degree of access to the artists he photographed, capturing both defining public moments and the candid, behind-the-scenes relationships that surrounded them. He served as chief photographer for Rock Scene Magazine in the 1970s and, after John Lennon moved to New York in 1971, became Lennon and Yoko Ono’s personal photographer and friend, creating some of the most enduring images of Lennon’s New York years.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Gruen has photographed generations of artists including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, David Bowie, the Clash, Ramones, Blondie, and the New York Dolls. Gruen’s photographs have been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Folkwang Museum in Essen, while his work has entered permanent collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London. His publications include Rock Seen and the memoir Right Place, Right Time: The Life of a Rock & Roll Photographer.

Zachary Lank

Zachary Lank (b. Annapolis, Maryland) is a New York-based artist and curator. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2012 and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2018. Lank was awarded an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant in 2022, as well as the Chubb Fellowship Award at the New York Academy of Art for 2022–23, and received the Henry Clews Award and residency through the La Napoule Art Foundation in 2023. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Art Herning in Denmark and Art Central in Hong Kong, and he has curated and exhibited with SPRING/BREAK Art Show in New York. His paintings were featured in New American Paintings Northeast Issue #170 and are permanently installed at the Andes Hotel as part of its historic restoration. In 2026, Lank presented Sundown’s Sowers at Main Projects in Richmond, Virginia, followed by his first New York City solo exhibition at The Empty Circle.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol (b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century and a leading figure of the Pop Art movement. His work transformed the relationship between fine art, celebrity, mass media, and popular culture, drawing on the visual language of advertising, photography, film, and consumer culture. Working across painting, printmaking, photography, film, and publishing, Warhol created some of the most enduring images of the postwar era, portraying figures including Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, and Mick Jagger. His work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tate.