ABOUT BEN URI

Ben Uri Gallery
The London Jewish Museum of Art

Ben Uri Gallery, founded in 1915, is Europe’s only dedicated Jewish Museum of Art, working in partnership with secular and Jewish Museums in the UK and internationally.

The gallery and museum is an educational institution dedicated to enhancing the quality of life of all whom it impacts. It embraces a new broad and fully inclusive role for museums in today’s society and addresses contemporary issues through art and its social history.

By fostering easy access, greater appreciation and both social and academic enjoyment of the visual arts, there is an ongoing opportunity to demonstrate its value as a robust and unique bridge between the cultural, religious, political differences and beliefs of our Fellow citizens.

Its purpose is to enable the largest possible audience, drawn from the widest possible communities from both home and abroad, to explore for inspiration, learning and enjoyment, the work, lives and contribution of British and European artists of Jewish descent, placed where relevant alongside their non–Jewish contemporaries, within the artistic and social context of the national cultural heritage.

Its principal route to achieving this is by enabling broad, and straightforward physical and visual access – through location, publication, Internet and outreach – to the following:

• The Permanent Collection:the largest of its kind in the world, accessed physically or virtually via continued exhibition, research, conservation and acquisition.
• Temporary Exhibitions: curating, touring and hosting important internationally–focused exhibitions of the widest artistic appeal that, without the museum’s focus, would not be seen in the UK. Kids always Free!
• Publications: commissioning new academic research on the artists and their historical context to accompany the museum’s exhibitions.
• Library and Archive: a resource dating from the turn of the 20th century, documenting and tracing in parallel the artistic and social development of the Ben Uri and Jewish artists working or exhibiting in Britain as part of the evolving British historical landscape.
• Education Programmes: developing ‘Art as Therapy’ for the benefit of the elderly in all our local communities. Artists: Monthly artist peer group programmes, Ben
  Uri International Jewish Artists of the Year Awards competition, Guidance and affiliation benefits.
• Care in the Community: A pioneering project of 'Art as Therapy' addressing the needs of the elderly by practising artists.
• Website: on–line educational and access tool, to function as a virtual gallery and artists’ reference resource for students, collectors and scholars.

Important and Major exhibitions include:

Sir Jacob Epstein (1980), Mark Gertler (1982), Jacob Kramer (1984), Solomon J Solomon RA (1990), Abram Games (1991), Claude Rogers (1992) Bernard Cohen (1994), The Ben Uri Story (2001), Bernard Meninsky (2001), Ludwig and Else Meidner (2002), Mark Gertler (2002), Making Waves (2003), The Tortoise and the Hare (2003), Director's Choice (2003), A Storm in Europe: Béla Kádár, Hugó Scheiber and Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin (2003), The Modern and the New (2004), Rediscovering Wolmark: a pioneer of British modernism (2004), Abram Games (2005) Chagall and his Circle (2005), Joash Woodrow (2005) Embracing the Exotic: Jacob Epstein and Dora Gordine (2006) Dora Holzhandler (2006) Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the pre-Raphaelites (2006) Regard and Ritual (2007) ,David Breuer Weil Project 3 (2007) Bomberg's Relevance (2007) Auktion 392 (2007) Isaac Rosenberg (2008) Israel and Art - tribute to Teddy Kollek (2008), Robert Lenkiewicz Self Portraits (2008) Forced Journeys (2009) Jacques Lipchitz (2009)

Browse past exhibitions

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