Burcu Dogramaci & Owen Hatherley in Conversation with Monica Bohm-Duchen
Can it be a coincidence that two books examining afresh the profound impact of the refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe on British culture have seen the light of day within just a few months of each other? What, more precisely, was the nature of that impact? And how, in particular, was London changed forever as a result? These will be just three of the questions to be addressed by their authors in conversation with Monica Bohm-Duchen, art historian and founding director of the Insiders/Outsiders project.
London Exile: Metropolis, Modernity and Artistic Migration by Burcu Dogramaci of Munich University, was published by Leuven University Press in September. In the words of one reviewer, the book “constitutes the definitive history of how the cultural workers who fled Nazi Germany―from artists, photographers, designers, and sculptors to publishers and gallerists―were shaped by their emigration. It also tells the story of how these immigrants left indelible marks on their city of refuge… remaking it into the celebrated modern cultural metropolis that it is today.”
The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century by Owen Hatherley was published by Allen Lane earlier this year to considerable interest and has been described by one reviewer as “a brilliant work of history… Owen Hatherley makes a fierce and elegant case for British culture as a living tapestry made ever brighter by newcomers to our strange island.”
To book, click here.