The Complexities of Assimilation in the 1906 Whitechapel Art Gallery Exhibition 'Jewish Art and Antiquities'

Abstract

Between 12 noon and 10 p.m. for the six weeks between November 7 and December 16, 1906 over 150,000 people visited the exhibition Jewish Art and Antiquities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.) The Gallery, founded by Canon and Henrietta Barnett, was opened on 12 March 1901 by Lord Rosebery. It was the outcome of twenty years of exhibitions organised by the Barnetts in St Jude's Schools, Whitechapel where the attendance figures had risen from 10,000 in 1881 to 55,300 in 1886.2 The success of the venture meant that extra space was desperately needed. In 1897 Canon Barnett decided to purchase land to build a 'permanent Picture Gallery scheme'.3 Within two weeks he had raised the ?6,000 necessary for the project and commissioned the architect Charles Harrison Townsend to design the building. The site chosen for the gallery was next to the Passmore Edwards Library4 in Whitechapel High Street. The decision to build the gallery next to the library was significant: their social functions were seen as compatible. It was considered that both provided the means for the social advancement of the working classes and gave them a respectable and sober form of recreation. Townsend had established a reputation as architect of the Bishopsgate Institute (1894) which provided a library and accommodation for the cultural activities of the working classes. The architectural style of the Whitechapel Gallery was to be modern and modern in a particular sense. It was described by The Studio as 'a building that attempts to strike its own note, to be personal, and to speak 1897, not 1797 or 1597'.5 The language of its design had affinities with that of the Arts and Crafts movement, which had come to be associated with forms of church socialism. Indeed, in 1875 William Morris had been commissioned to decorate St Jude's church by Barnett, who argued that: