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The Jewish, refugee and wide immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900 

BEN URI is a leading, distinctive and focussed digital resource enhancing its vibrant gallery programming in St. John’s Wood, North West London. 

Ben Uri’s core objective is to globally provide unparalleled, scholarly reference resources on the wide Jewish, Refugee, and Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900 to students, researchers, academics, critics, art market professionals and collectors and an ever- growing interested public.

Ben Uri was founded in 1915 in the economically poor but culturally rich district of Whitechapel in East London, by a Russian-born, Paris-based, Jewish artist and craftsman Lazar Berson, to offer support Jewish artists working outside the cultural mainstream. It lost its rented gallery in 1996 following the sale of the building it was housed in.

On reopening in 2002, Ben Uri’s remit has expanded to focus on the wider refugee and immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900. Following its centenary exhibition in 2015 held at Somerset House the museum rethought its future given the harsh reality of being one of the over 50% of UK museums generating less than 5,000 visitors a year which in London is unsustainable.

In 2018, the museum published a seismic shift in positioning, prioritising digital engagement and dissemination over physical and prioritising scholarship, available via its expansive digital resources, as its principal focus with the Ben Uri Research Unit (BURU) offering an umbrella for all its activities.  

Today, Ben Uri hosts four websites:  

• Benuri.orgis the ‘mothership’ that links all three sites and, additionally, offers over 70 online exhibitions, 100 podcasts and films, as well as new, expanding content featuring relevant, open-source PhD theses and dissertations, alongside a growing reference resource of focused essays and articles. 
• Buru.org.ukhas published some 1,000 profiles of individuals from across a dozen different professions within the arts from some 100 countries of birth. The majority to date are European. This resource is fully searchable across a myriad of fields.  
• Diaspora-artists.netoriginated by Professor Eddie Chambers, has published some 2,500 profiles reflecting the Black and Asian contribution.   
• The collection site reflects its academic focus and is the inspiration of the museum’s scholarship and as well as 4 exhibitions a year in its Gallery. It supports a large loan programme and tours exhibitions and lends works to museums nationally and internationally.