Bushey Museum and Art Gallery this week announced a partnership exhibition with Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London.

From tomorrow more than 70 artworks by a range of artists, including famous names such as Frank Auerbach, Leon Bakst, David Bomberg, Marc Chagall, Naum Gabo, Mark Gertler, R.B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Jacob Kramer and Camille Pissarro, as well as a number of less well-known artists, will be on display as part of a loan exhibition from the Ben Uri Collection.

The Ben Uri Art Society emerged from the Jewish community in 1915 in London’s East End. Named in The Book of Exodus: Bezalel Ben Uri was an artist-craftsman of high renown, skilled in painting and working in valuable woods as well as precious metals and stones.

He was responsible, with divine inspiration received through Moses, for designing and building the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant.

Reflecting its proud heritage, the Ben Uri began to form a collection of work by artists of British and European Jewish descent. Today, the works, lives and contribution of these artists are interpreted within the wider contexts of art history, politics and society.

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum seeks to inform the largest possible audience from the widest range of communities about its migrant past, showing how migrant artists from all communities continually express feelings about removal from the homeland and resettlement in a new country.

The collection now holds more than 1,300 works in various media by over 400 artists, and Ben Uri now has status as a gallery of international importance. Since 2000 the remit has widened to include work by émigré artists from a greater range of cultural, religious and geographical backgrounds under the strapline Ben Uri: Art, Identity and Migration. Ben Uri now aims to be the art museum for everyone with no ethnic, religious or other barriers to engagement.

Today the phrase ‘émigré artist’ may have a different meaning, because so many of us choose to live in another land for work or study, but the same challenges of assimilation, of settling into a foreign land’, remain.

Bushey Museum, Rudolph Road, Bushey, WD23 3HW, Saturday, January 20 until June 24 2018, open Thursdays to Sundays, 11am to 4pm with wheelchair access.