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”.
The 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.
Dr Roza I.M. El-Eini is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society who specialises in British Mandate Palestine and has worked at the Israel Museum and Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem
