ANN: Lecture Series – Immigrants and Their Art (Ben Uri Gallery and Museum; from 7 Sep 2022)


As part of the gallery’s digital programme, these evenings explore the stories of immigrant artists’ journeys and share much that is not widely known about the artists’ lives and impact on their art. This important series reflects the principal focus of immigrants and their contribution to art history of the Ben Uri Research Unit.

Émigré Artists and Art Dealers In World War II America

Jenny Mccomas, Curator of European and American Art, Eskenazi Museum Of Art,
Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana, USA)

Forging an American Market for German Expressionism
WEDNESDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2022, 6.30 PM BST

Curt Valentin and Karl Nierendorf, German émigré art dealers who relocated to New York in the late 1930s, played critical roles in creating an American market for German Expressionism during the World War II era. Taking a cue from the 1938 Twentieth-Century German Artexhibition at London’s New Burlington Galleries, they did so by drawing attention to Expressionism’s defamation as “degenerate” in the Third Reich.

Exiled Artists in Wartime America
WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2022, 6.30 PM BST

Many prominent European artists-including George Grosz, Jacques Lipchitz, and Marc Chagall-resettled (permanently or temporarily) in the United States following the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany or the outbreak of war. It has long been acknowledged that these exiled artists permanently altered the course of American art. This talk focuses on the ways in which curators, gallerists, and critics discussed and promoted the work of exiled artists-especially German and Jewish artists-in wartime America against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment and rising antisemitism.

Paul Rosenberg: Picasso’s Dealer in America
WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 2022, 6.30 PM BST

The renowned French art dealer, famed for promoting such modernist giants as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, had become a refugee as Paris’s Nazi occupiers turned his home into the “Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question” and looted his gallery stock of modernist paintings. This talk will survey Rosenberg’s efforts to reestablish his business abroad and his interest in promoting American artists (such as Marsden Hartley, Max Weber, and Abraham Rattner) alongside the French Cubists.

For full details and bookings: benuri.org/whats-on/.