Will Gompertz, Ben Okri, Tommy Wide and Alex Walton

Art In Exile, an exhibition as part of Imperial War Museum’s Culture Under Attack season, uncovers how cultural treasures in British museums and galleries were evacuated during the Second World War. But how do we decide what to save when our culture is threatened by conflict? And what do our choices say about us as a society? How have historic attitudes to what constitutes ‘great’ art shifted over time, for better or for worse? Art in Exile curator Alex Walton and a panel of experts including Ben Okri, award-winning poet, novelist and cultural activist, and Tommy Wide, co-curator of Smithsonian London and former assistant director at the Freer Sackler Galleries (Washington), will provoke discussion and debate by paralleling cultural attitudes to art during the Second World War with contemporary cultural values to ask how might our decisions differ today and what we have learnt in the process. Chaired by Will Gompertz, BBC Arts Editor and author of What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art, and Think Like An Artist.