Has the Ben Uri art gallery betrayed its heritage?
The Ben Uri’s plan to reposition itself as a museum of immigrant, rather than Jewish, art -— as well as the sale of a large chunk of its collection — has caused huge controversy. Here we present two opposing views of the changes
YES
TODAY BEN Uri has never been stronger compared to either when we started 18 years ago or at any time in our 103-year history.
Our purpose in 2001 was to try and secure a viable, productive future for Ben Uri following its gallery closure in 1996 and it was only kept alive after by the determination of our predecessors.
Eighteen years later, we have succeeded and the great legacies of the past are celebrated within an alive and vibrant institution. We have the forward strategy, personnel, skill sets, infrastructure, methodology and now (part of) the money needed to secure a distinctive productive long term future driven by public benefit.
We added 300 works to the collection, including masterworks by Auerbach, Bomberg, Chagall, Epstein, Gertler, Herman, Kramer, Rosenberg, Soutine and Wolmark. Our educational films are on the National Education Network accessible to 20,000 schools. We have curated more than 60 major shows and toured them nationally
and internationally with surveys on Jankel Adler and Arthur Segal to come. Our scholarship has been recognised as pre-eminent after 15 years studying Jewish immigrant artists who came to Britain.
We have published more than 40 books and catalogues distributed internationally, principally on Jewish artists within the artistic rather than religious context. Our archives will be made available to the public for the first time next year and the collection is available to view and search on line, as are more than 50 short films. Our research library added more than 200 books and will also be available to the public for the first time next year. After 10 years, our professional team are leaders in the field of researched art interventions using our collection for those living at risk of or with dementia.
Ben Uri’s ‘earned’ income in the 6 years up to 2000 was £293,000 and its costs were £419,000. In the 17 years to 2017, our earned income was £5.64m and costs were £5.53m. Collection acquisitions in the six years to 2000 was nil compared to £800,000 in the 17 years to 2017.
Net asset value went from £116,000 at the end of 1995 to £6.21m at the 2017. Unrestricted funds remain as scarce as
they have always been and the Trustees addressed this decisively this autumn in the best interests of the charity. We greatly respect, but disagree with, the 11 of the 26 member advisory panel who felt obliged to resign.
We question the public benefit of having a majority of our collection languishing in long-term storage. What is the public benefit in having, for example, 60 sketches by Dagahani, 48 prints by Kaplan, 30 cartoons by ‘Vicky’ or 28 woodcuts by Pins when only one or two are rarely, if ever, exhibited?
We now critically measure return on investment programme by programme based on public benefit and engagement. The same formula evaluated the benefits of keeping certain seldom displayed works against the potential benefit their sales value will generate.
The comfort memories of a tight knit Jewish community in London, with Ben Uri as its centre of art and culture, is long gone .
Ben Uri can survive long-term either by large financial reserves, which we have never had (nor, as it happens, have any of the nine people who have written or spoken to the press in protest against our plan made any charitable donations to it since at least 2008) or by ensuring relevance and generating distinctive public benefit and added value.
Einstein identified the inevitability of generating the same result from repeating the same formula. Darwin recognised that it is the responsiveness to change that ensures survival.
Our strategic plan is built on the relevance of our existing strengths and focuses on two of the great challenges of our time: immigration and mental health for the elderly. The plan is online.
The Trustees and senior colleagues will continue to make the difficult and critical decisions as that is our responsibility. As a result, Ben Uri will continue to proudly represent, and bring credit to, the community from within the national mainstream cultural sector.
Ben Uri will continue to bring credit to the community
NO
IN RECENT years, changes by the Ben Uri have systematically removed the “Jewish” from it. In their obsessive drive to submerge this element of the Ben Uri and find a central London location, they have turned it into “The Art Museum for Everyone”, as the Tate, V&A, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and other behemoths are enviously eyed and lined up as the Ben Uri’s “opposition”.
Its Board states that the émigre Ben Uri story is “universal”. This betrays the origins of the Ben Uri and its Jewish artists. It is not by chance that the Ben Uri bares its name. Bezalel Ben Uri was the master craftsman who created the Tabernacle and “was to engage in all kinds of crafts” (Exodus 31, 1–5). Founded in the Jewish ghetto of Whitechapel in 1915, the “Jewish National Arts Association London Ben
Ouri” had close ties with the Bezalel School in Jerusalem, established in 1906.
Both organisations had chosen the name “as an inspiration for their mission to revive and promote Jewish art”, according to Ben Uri’s website.
There has been an onslaught on the word “Jewish”. In 2014, the Ben Uri “Objects” were “specifically restricted”, notably for the “Jewish people”. This was justified by a spurious survey. In his 2013 report, Mr Glasser wrote about the plans “to upgrade” the Gallery’s “sub brand line” of “The Art Museum for Everyone”, so that the secular world would “recognise Ben Uri was their property and our doors were their doors to open”.
So open were these doors that the “Jewish” was pushed out of them. As Mr Glasser reported: “Our research confirmed that c 90% of non-Jews are reticent about coming to a London Jewish anything including a Museum of Art as the ‘religious’ connotation suggested it was not for them and, given the multitude of alternative options in London, such a venue was not high on their visiting list.”
It is staggering that those running a museum of Jewish art would commission
such a survey to “confirm” this.
In November, beloved masterpieces were sold to fund the “upgrade” as 50 per cent of the gallery’s unique collection has been slated to go under the hammer. In so doing, the Trustees have made Ben Uri a place that, in the words of The Times, is now “ostracised by the art world”.
Adding insult to injury, Mr Glasser told the Guardian that there was “no real demand today for a Jewish institution for a Jewish public about Jewish artists”.
In the gallery’s reports in 2017, the Jewish community is blamed for not being a core financial supporter, and the secular section of the community is said to be “shrinking”, so no change of support within the community was to be expected.
There are hundreds and thousands of Jews in the UK who are artists and craftspeople, across the whole community. What should be their natural and nurturing place for exhibitions has effectively been closed to them,
doing to them what was done to the Jewish artists who set up the Ben Uri.
The Ben Uri Executive Chair and Board have failed the Ben Uri. The chair was telling the Guardian there was “no real demand” just as the highly successful Jewish Film Festival was about to start, mirroring the success of Jewish Book Week.
And what of the immigrants? If the Ben Uri encounters further financial difficulties, as it inevitably will considering the anger from the sale, will the Trustees carry out a survey about the word “immigrant”?
The Ben Uri Executive Chair and Board have failed the Ben Uri, Jewish artists and the Jewish community. They have failed to honour and uphold the memory of the Jewish artists who set it up.
They should have left years ago, instead of thrashing about to make it something it was not meant to be, battering its intrinsic Jewishness into the ground.
The Ben Uri board have failed Jewish artists