Ben Uri Gallery and Museum

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, engaging as benuri.org, is the first full scale virtual museum and research centre. Conceived in 2018 and published within the 2019 Sustainability and Public Benefit StrategicPlan benuri.org was ‘soft’ launched in September 2020. Ben Uri was founded by a Russian Jewish immigrant artist in 1915 in Whitechapel in the East End of London. It was the firstBritish Jewish cultural institution and the centre of engagement for two waves of immigration - the first pre WWI fromRussia and the second pre and post WWII from Central Europe escaping or surviving the Holocaust. It became effectively homeless in 1996 and in 2001 a new Board set a transformative strategy to operate in the mainstream of British culture. In 2018 the Trustees published its Sustainability and Public Benefit Strategy which carved an enlightened operating formula for this (and other?) small and medium sized museums (representing 82% of the UK's 3,500 museums) to achieve financial sustainable and deliver distinctive public benefit. In September 2020, after 20 months of content development, the first full scale virtual (art) museum launched encompassing all the traditional content and more but multiplied in quantum: e.g. 40exhibitions at any one time, 1400+ works fully searchable, 400+ artist biographies, 100+ reports from the Research Unit, 100+ films, 60+ podcasts etc and the Research Centre for the recording of the Jewish and immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900 alongside the Arts and HealthInstitute for the study and dissemination of cost, and recipient, effective art interventions using our collection as its source. Our London gallery remains an important enhancement of our digital presence by housing our exhibition gallery and an extended art reference library on the lives and works of Jewish and Immigrant artists to Britain since 1900 reflecting the Research Unit’s focus. The future is digital - our future is benuri.org