About Us

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    our core purpose is to research and digitally record the wide refugee and IMMIGRAnt contribution to british visual culture since 1900.

     

     our Digital and physical programming evolve from our research unit,  our collection, and our immigrant heritage. it is designed to educate, entertain and inspire further research.

     

    Our Philosophy is to surpass ethnic, cultural and religious obstacles to engagementwithin the arts sector, addresses contemporary and historical issues of identity and migration, by presenting and sharing art differently, we have encouraged you to explore your own and your community identity and creativity.

     

     

     


     
  • Research Unit (BURU)

     

    Research Unit (BURU)

     

    BURU incorporates the Museum's Collection, Exhibitions, Publications, Archive, Library, and the physical and digital dissemination of all programming.

     

    Ben Uri has created the country’s first digital resource that comprehensively records the Jewish, refugee and wide immigrant  contribution to the visual arts in Britain since 1900. This is a long term ongoing eduucational resource.

     

    In the past twenty years Ben Uri has curated some 100 distinctive exhibitions, toured to some 30 different locations worldwide and written and published some 50 scholarly catalogues and monographs which are distributed nationally and internationally.

     

    BURU website

     

  • Collection

    Collection

    The Ben Uri collections span over 120 years and is composed of some 400 artists from 40 countries, of which 60% are émigrés and 29% are women. We have defined the 1000 strong collections into two categories: Pre-eminent; some 100 works which are protected in perpetuity within a separate legal trust; and the remainder in Core. Since 2002, the commitment to building the Collection within carefully crafted and qualitative criteria has led to world-class additions by artists including Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Marc Chagall, Jacob Epstein, Eva Frankfurther, Mark Gertler, George Grosz, Dora Holzhandler, Josef Herman, Peter Howson, Edith Kiss, Emmanuel Levy, Max Liebermann, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, Jacqueline Nicholls, Orovida Pissarro, Kurt Schwitters, Chaïm Soutine, Alfred Wolmark, and Clare Winsten. Many of these acquisitions would have been possible without the greatly appreciated financial support of Art Fund, National Lottery Heritage Fund, ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and like-minded philanthropists.  

     

    Ben Uri Collection website

  • Arts and Mental Health (BUAH)

     

    Arts and Mental Health (BUAH)

     

    This decade long objective is to identify through research and evaluation, 1) why and what are the elements of an art work that trigger the most engagement and responses from those who live in social isolation and/or with dementia, and 2) how best in terms of cost and effectivness to dessiminate such programmes with the 70+ demographics, of which 95% live in their own homes.

     

    Whilst not researched we believe that much of the evaluated programmes and 'How to' training films and toolkits are equally relevant for all ages.

     

    Arts and Mental Health webpage

  • HISTORY

    Ben Uri was founded by Lazar Berson, an émigré Russian artist, in 1915 in Whitechapel in London.
     

    It originally was an art venue for Jewish immigrant artists who were unable to gain access to mainstream art societies at that time, due to the social discrimination and obstacles faced by migrant communities. A registered charity as well as a museum, Ben Uri was the cornerstone of the Jewish community’s cultural activity until the late 1970s. Ben Uri Art Society, as it was then, lost its gallery in 1995 when the synagogue building, in which it was housed, was sold. 

     

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    A new Board of Trustees was elected in October 2000, led by current Executive Chair, David Glasser, to deliver a radical strategy to reshape and reposition the institution. The charity/museum was relaunched in 2001 by the new Board, with a new name, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.  It rented its current gallery in St. John’s Wood in June 2002. It was seen as a  ‘start up’ museum, piloting its way into the centre of Britain’s mainstream arena. 

     

    Since 2001, Ben Uri has curated some 100 exhibitions, toured to 30 different cities across 3 continents, published over 50 books and catalogues which have been distributed nationally and internationally. Ben Uri has produced over 200 short films. Its scholarship on Jewish and immigrant artists is recognised internationally. Ben Uri has also pioneered a new approach to using art differently through its Arts and Dementia programming within its Mental Health programme. Working with universities, the content and structure are the result of research and evaluation. The objective is to upscale and establish a new national standard for art interventions.

  • Ben Uri's new AI inclusive disclaimer:
    "All content of the Ben Uri Research Unit is designed for non-commercial, educational and critique user purposes and shall not be used in any form for the purpose of training artificial intelligence or machine learning technology. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Ben Uri expressly reserves all content from the text and data mining exception."