Who is behind Art UK?
Art UK is a registered charity (previously known as the Public Catalogue Foundation
Project partners include the BBC, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Oxford University Press.
What is Art UK's purpose?
Art UK's mission is to open up public collections for enjoyment, learning and research. We support public collections to show their artworks online. Find out more on our about pages.
How do I search Art UK?
Artworks can be searched by adding words into the search bar on the homepage, or from the Artworks page, accessed via the menu in the top-right corner. There is also a site-wide search bar at the top of the menu.
Is there an Art UK app?
There is an Art UK guide featured on the Bloomberg Connects app, which is downloadable from the Google Play and Apple App stores. The Bloomberg Connects app can be downloaded by anyone, anywhere – as well as showcasing highlights from Art UK on our own guide, it features guides from some of our partner collections in the UK, and guides from international institutions.
Where can I find more guidance on how to use Curations?
Find more information on our Curations help pages.
What qualifies an artwork to be on Art UK?
The ambition behind Art UK is to show as much of the UK's national art collection as possible. Historically, the two main criteria for inclusion related to the ownership of the artworks and the medium of the artworks.
Ownership
The principal focus of the initiative is artworks that are in public ownership. The vast majority of the artworks on the site meet this criterion. However, a number of important collections that are not in public ownership are also included.
The artworks that are in public ownership include those owned by the state through national museums and organisations such as the Government Art Collection, Arts Council England and British Council. We also include all the local authority museums. Museum collections that are owned by charitable trusts (a good proportion of UK museums) are also included, as well as artworks held by universities, hospitals, town halls, local libraries and other civic buildings. The art collections of the National Trust and English Heritage are also part of the initiative.
In addition, we have included a number of collections that are outside the definition of 'public ownership' for the purpose of public awareness and research. For example, this includes artworks in Bishops' palaces and Oxford and Cambridge colleges.
All the 3,400 or so art collections that feature on Art UK have signed an agreement to be part of the initiative.
Since 2019 we have also added public art to the site – firstly sculpture and since 2024 murals. These have been recorded and photographed by a team of volunteers.
Medium
Before 2016, Art UK primarily focused on recording artworks in oil, acrylic and tempera. Firstly, because oil was the preferred medium of most well-known artists for hundreds of years. Secondly, the size of the UK's oil painting collection was a practical proposition to digitise in its entirety.
From mid-2016 Art UK began accepting pre-digitised works in other mediums, such as drawings, prints, watercolours, works in mixed media and collage. Only Partners can upload existing digitised images of works on paper to show on Art UK.
Since the start of 2019, Art UK added thousands of sculptures, photographed as part of a national project to record the nation's sculpture collection of the last thousand years. This four-year project was partly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Since 2024, Art UK has also added thousands of murals, photographed as part of a national project to record them, partly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Where does the information on Art UK come from?
The core information about artworks and venues has been gathered by Art UK directly from the galleries and art collections. Art UK depends on the participating collections to keep this information up to date.
Tags displayed on the website, providing keywords and subject classifications, are generated by the Tagger project.
Some of the information about artists' birth and death dates and nationality comes from ULAN (the Union List of Artists Names), under licence from the J. Paul Getty Trust. Biographical information about artists is provided by The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press), other OUP titles, David Buckman's Artists in Britain Since 1945, Liss Llewellyn, Art Detective discussions, Wikipedia and various other sources. The data is regularly enhanced when new information comes to light.
Information about sculptures and murals is provided by research undertaken by project volunteers, and data is reviewed and enhanced by Art UK project staff.
How big is the UK national art collection?
There are over 200,000 oil paintings in the UK's national collection. To give a sense of scale, it's nearly a hundred times the size of collection of The National Gallery in London, which has around 2,300 oil paintings. We know this because we spent ten years digitising them, through visiting each of the collections that owned oil paintings.
The number of sculptures is thought to be in the low hundreds of thousands. The focus of our major sculpture digitisation programme was sculpture of the last thousand years, which we estimate to be over 50,000.
The number of watercolours, prints and drawings run into the millions. The vast majority of these have not been photographed and many could have poor records. Until 2024 we encouraged our Partners to upload to Art UK the records and photographs of those drawings, pastels, watercolours, photographs and prints they have already digitised.
As of late 2024, we are using a new tool – the Museum Data Service – to exponentially grow the number of artworks on Art UK. This is a new project run jointly by Art UK, Collections Trust and the University of Leicester. It has already seen the number of artworks grow to over 500,000 by February 2025.
Can I go to see all of the artworks on Art UK in real life?
At any one time, around 80% of the oil paintings in the national collection are not on public display (the percentage is likely higher for works on paper). They are possibly being conserved or repaired, or are in storage (because of limited display space), or in a part of a building that the public cannot easily access.
Where we can, we've identified exactly where you can see an artwork, but in many cases, the artworks are moved around too frequently for us to keep accurate information. If you want to see an artwork, it's important to check with the relevant venue before making your visit.
Are all the artworks by UK artists?
There are over 55,000 artists represented on Art UK. Whilst the majority of these are British artists, a good number are from other countries, including many well-known names such as Rembrandt, Monet and Vincent van Gogh.
Why are some artwork records missing an image?
For almost all of the oil paintings on Art UK, there will be an image. Where there is not, this may be because the artwork was not available at the time of photography, either because it was being restored or, in a few instances, was missing. Alternatively, the lack of photograph might be for copyright reasons.
As we continue to add artworks of all kinds at a much higher rate thanks to the Museum Data Service, there will be more artworks where an image is not yet available. We will work with collections to source these images where at all possible.
Why are some artworks shown in black and white, and some obscured by pieces of paper?
Where artworks are missing or have been stolen, the best possible photograph on record has been reproduced. In some cases, this may be a black-and-white photograph.
When artworks – particularly paintings – are being conserved or repaired, they may have conservation tissue attached to the surface. The tissue was not removed when the paintings were photographed, as doing so may have damaged the artworks.
Why do very few artworks appear when searching by 'Style'?
Styles were initially only allocated to artworks after they had been through a crowd-sourced tagging process.
They are now connected to our art terms pages, but all tagging of styles is currently done manually.
How do tags end up on Art UK?
Tags are 'people', 'places' and 'things' generated through our Tagger tool. The initial Tagger project was suspended in 2016 and relaunched in 2022. Tags have also been added with the help of an image recognition project run by the Visual Geometry Group, University of Oxford.
When active, Tagger invites contributors to choose their own words to describe what can be seen in a selection of artworks. These tags are then fed through to the Art UK team to be verified. Tags will ultimately help searchability of the vast number of artworks on the site.
How do artworks end up in public collections?
Artworks end up in public collections mostly either through people giving or leaving artworks to the collections, or through the collections purchasing artworks.
Can I contribute my own artworks to Art UK?
You could give individual artworks as gifts to a participating public collection, such as a local museum. If your gift is accepted, as long as the work is in a medium within the remit of Art UK, it may be added to Art UK at the collection's discretion.
Alternately, privately owned permanent collections (consisting of a number of artworks) may be added to Art UK for the benefit of wider public awareness and research. If you are in possession of a permanent art collection that you believe meets the remit of this initiative, and would like to feature this collection on Art UK, please email collections@artuk.org
Can I get involved in Art UK?
Yes, you can help us by tagging artworks or by making your own Curation. Learn more in our Participate section.
Can I write for Art UK?
Art UK welcomes pitches from writers, primarily stories that bring the UK national collection to life. Stories are sent as part of our newsletter to Art UK's extensive mailing list, ensuring a broad reach. Please see our page on how to pitch for the most up-to-date information on what we're looking for.
Who do I contact if I know something about an artwork on Art UK, or spot a mistake?
Data is provided by the owning collections of the artworks. As well as getting in touch with us, you can also contact the owning collection with the correction, and encourage them to update Art UK as well as their own records.
If you have information about a rights holder of an artwork – or if you are a rights holder of an artwork on the site, and want to update the record – please email rights@artuk.org
Why are some artworks presented differently on the websites of the institutions that own them?
We rely on the owning collections of the artworks to keep Art UK up to date. Information about artworks, such as artwork titles or artist names, has been standardised across the project, which may result in some discrepancies in terminology or presentation.
We are a gallery or collection and we aren't on Art UK – how can we join?
Please get in touch at collections@artuk.org
I am an artist, or copyright holder of an artist's work: what are the benefits of participating in the project?
The Art UK website and the artist's own page, in particular, will significantly increase access to the artist's work and raise their profile.
There will be a link from this page to the artist's own website if the web address is provided to Art UK.
The Art UK copyright team works hard to trace copyright holders of artworks in participating collections. Despite the team's utmost efforts, it hasn't proved possible to trace every copyright holder.
If you are an artist or copyright holder of artwork in UK public collections, and we haven't yet contacted you, please read our missing copyright owners page.
What can I do with the images on the Art UK site?
Art UK is committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others. Please see Art UK's images and copyright guidance pages for information about how images on Art UK can be used.
I work on behalf of an art collection represented on Art UK. How can I keep Art UK up to date?
Participating art collections are encouraged to ensure their artwork and venue information on Art UK is up to date.
The Collections Portal was launched in 2016. The Portal allows art collections to add new works, and edit their existing artworks and venues directly. Collections that have signed up as Art UK Partners can upload pre-existing digitised collections of prints, drawings and watercolours using the Portal, but all collections can add new acquisitions in oil and acrylic, or sculpture.
If you are from a collection and would like access to the Collections Portal, please contact collections@artuk.org
As of 2024 Art UK is introducing the Museum Data Service, a new way for any of your new acquisitions and updates to your artwork records automatically reflected on Art UK. To express your interest, get in touch via the Museum Data Service website.
I work on behalf of an art collection represented on Art UK. How can I obtain high-resolution images of my artworks?
Art UK (as the Public Catalogue Foundation) photographed the majority of the artworks on the website. High-resolution photographs of the artworks were shared with every participating art collection.
If a collection requires a replacement set of images there may be a charge of £10 plus VAT. For more information please contact info@artuk.org
Can Art UK help with valuations or identification of privately owned artworks?
We do not undertake valuations or identification of privately owned artworks.
If you are looking to have an artwork valued, you should go to a reputable auction house. For identification and further information, some local museums may offer this service.
Have you got a glossary of terms used on Art UK?
See Art UK's art terms pages for explanations of art-historical terminology, styles and movements.
I have a question about the Shop or purchases from the Shop
Please visit the Art UK Shop FAQ page.
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