{"id":494106,"date":"2026-02-23T12:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494106\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:52:08","slug":"weve-scratched-the-surface-mission-to-digitise-uk-public-art-reaches-1m-entries-art-and-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/494106\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019ve scratched the surface\u2019: mission to digitise UK public art reaches 1m entries | Art and design"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a bronze Rodin sculpture of the naked Eve<\/a> outside a Nando\u2019s in Harlow to more than 6,000 artworks by JMW Turner<\/a>, to a crumpled-up piece of A4 paper<\/a> owned by Manchester Art Gallery, the UK\u2019s public art collection is a wonderful and varied thing.<\/p>\n

It is huge, as demonstrated by the charity Art UK<\/a>, which has announced it has reached a million artworks on its database and appointed a new chair who said: \u201cWe\u2019ve only scratched the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Terrett, a former director of design for the UK government, has been announced as the new chair of a charity that is celebrating its 10th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Art UK began with a mission to digitally catalogue the UK\u2019s paintings. Over the years that has been expanded to include drawings, watercolours, ceramics, sculptures, stained glass, banners, architectural drawings and street murals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is a huge, encyclopedic, fun resource, which lends itself to going down any number of rabbit holes. Type in the word \u201cmosquito\u201d, for example, and you discover 53 listings, from large technical drawings of actual mosquitoes<\/a>, to paintings of de Havilland Mosquito planes from the second world war, to a sculpture in a North Yorkshire forest<\/a> celebrating the Women\u2019s Timber Corps \u2013 lumberjills<\/a> \u2013 who felled and sawed the wood used to make the planes.<\/p>\n

Osborne Henry Meyer\u2019s Let Eric Remember from Aberdeen Art Gallery. Photograph: Aberdeen archives, gallery & museums\/Art UK\"BenBen Terrett at Windsor Castle after receiving his earlier this month. Photograph: Courtesy of Ben Terrett<\/p>\n

Or search Martin Creed, the artist who won the Turner prize for a work where the lights in a room go on and off, and you find 24 of his works in public collections, including his crumpled-up ball of paper in Manchester.<\/p>\n

The database is an incredible resource that should be so much better known, Terrett said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is one of those ideas that you\u2019re really glad it exists because if it didn\u2019t, you\u2019d think somebody should do that.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my jobs as chair is to help raise that profile, because probably not enough people hear about it. It\u2019s digitising all the public artworks in the UK and there\u2019s a really obvious side to that, which is the Tate and places like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there\u2019s loads of other places like hospitals and council buildings \u2026 places like that are public and have incredible artworks in them that people don\u2019t get to see or don\u2019t know exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Sophia Hagarty\u2019s The Canal, Venice., from the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. Photograph: Victoria art gallery\/Art UK<\/p>\n

The database, Terrett said, shines light on just how many artworks are never seen because they are in storage.<\/p>\n

Terrett, who was made a CBE by the king last week, led the design team that launched gov.uk and is the CEO and co-founder of the consultancy Public Digital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said his childhood experiences had fed his passion for widening access to the arts and design. \u201cI grew up in a small village in Wiltshire,\u201d he said. \u201cThere weren\u2019t museums, there weren\u2019t art galleries and getting access to that kind of stuff was really difficult. I went to a comprehensive school with a great art teacher and a great art department but you very much had to push yourself to find out more about this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes it is even harder for children today: \u201cCreative education in state schools has been decimated.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Foggie\u2019s Reverie from the University of Dundee fine art collection. Photograph: University of Dundee fine art collections\/Art UK<\/p>\n

There is also evidence that interacting with the database encourages people to visit galleries in person.<\/p>\n

Recent additions to the database, which helped it towards the million figure, include a 1951 stencil by Henri Matisse<\/a> at the University of Lancaster; a Gwen John flower painting<\/a> at National Museum Cardiff; a Venice canal painting<\/a> by Mary Hagarty at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath; and a portrait titled Reverie by David Foggie<\/a> at the University of Dundee.<\/p>\n

The board of Art<\/a> UK said it was looking forward to Terrett\u2019s fresh thinking and insights to help it \u201creach new audiences, embrace new technologies and creative opportunities, build its income base, its international profile and its following\u201d.<\/p>\n

Terrett said he remained convinced the internet was a force for good. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe that these days. It\u2019s hard to hold on to that belief. But it still is. I think in the world it\u2019s still a net positive. And this is just a really nice example of where the internet really is doing good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From a bronze Rodin sculpture of the naked Eve outside a Nando\u2019s in Harlow to more than 6,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494107,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-494106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}