Scholarship at Ben Uri
Ben Uri has, at its core, a commitment to accessible scholarship across various levels of academia. We support our senior curators in their research, particularly focusing on refugee and immigrant artists (either first or second generation), thus furthering their international reputations and enabling them to continue to develop their areas of expertise.
Ben Uri Research Unit
Our research interests reflect Ben Uri/BURU's focus on Jewish and immigrant artists and designers in Britain since 1900, with a particular emphasis on those who arrived here during the two main waves of Jewish migration: the first at the end of the 19th/early 20th century from the Russian Pale of Settlement, particularly the so-called Whitechapel Boys - Anglo-Jewish modernists associated with London's East End ghetto; and the second, the so-called Hitler émigrés, who arrived c. 1933-45. Within these two cohorts, we have each developed research interests across a number of national groups in exile (e.g. German, Austrian, Polish, Czech) and on a number of individual artists/designers/art historians, some directly connected with Ben Uri.
Sarah Macdougall
Rachel Dickson
Nicola Baird
Director and Head of BURU and Ben Uri Collections
Head of Curatorial Services and Senior Researcher at BURU
Research Officer at BURU
Example available to download in PDF by kind permission of the authors:
Example available to download in PDF by kind permission of the author
Example available to download in PDF by kind permission of the author:
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eds., Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, 'Uproar! The First 50 Years of The London Group' (London: Ben Uri, 2013)
(London: Ben Uri, 2013)
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ed., Sarah MacDougall, Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-44 (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2012)
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ed., Nicola Baird, Czech Routes (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2019
Books Available to download
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Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century. By kind permission of the authors. Including a chapter 'Mapping Finchleystrasse, Mitteleuropa in North West London', contributed by Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall. Open access book information here. Download PDF of books here.
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eds., Burcu Dogramaci, Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, Helene Roth, 'Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century' (Leuven, 2020)
Articles available to download
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An excerpt from Leo Koenig's Yiddish little magazine Renesans (1920). By kind permission of author. Download article PDF here
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Genre and Nationalism: Boris Schatz and his school by Ira Rezak, MD. By kind permission of author. Download in PDF here
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Ira Rezak, (2005), Médailles
Lectures
'Insiders/Outsiders': The Ben Uri Art Society and Émigré Artists, 1933-1945. Speaker: Rachel Dickson for the Institute of Modern Languages Research at the The 'Insiders/Outsiders' Festival 2019. By kind permission of IMLR. Watch lecture here.
