Explore 1,000,000 Digitized Artworks from Across the UK: Pai…

No art enthu­si­ast’s vis­it to the Unit­ed King­dom would be com­plete with­out days at the British Muse­um, the Tate, the V&A and the Nation­al Gallery. The fact that all those respect­ed insti­tu­tions are in Lon­don con­sti­tutes a plau­si­ble excuse nev­er to stray out­side the cap­i­tal. But that cap­i­tal is sur­round­ed, lest we for­get, by not just a whole coun­try, but a whole Unit­ed King­dom’s worth of coun­tries. Each region of Eng­land has its own muse­ums and gal­leries worth vis­it­ing, and so do Scot­land, Wales, and North­ern Ire­land. But why just vis­it muse­ums and gal­leries? Uni­ver­si­ties, libraries, town halls, hos­pi­tals, homes: these places and more also put art on dis­play for any­one who cares to vis­it them, which you can now do not just phys­i­cal­ly, but also online at Art UK.

A free-to-all por­tal that “con­nects every­one with the UK’s pub­lic art col­lec­tions,” Art UK has tak­en it as its mis­sion to “dig­i­tal­ly unite one mil­lion art­works from 3,500 insti­tu­tions.” Some of the most pop­u­lar of the rough­ly 70,000 artists whose work it makes avail­able to view online include Fran­cis Bacon, Agnes Mar­tin, Sal­vador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Tracey Emin, Paul Gau­guin, Con­stan­tin Brân­cuși, Damien Hirst, and Yay­oi Kusama.

As even that short list reflects, what’s on dig­i­tal dis­play at Art UK is by no means lim­it­ed to British works, nor are there any restric­tions on medi­um or sen­si­bil­i­ty. Paint­ings, draw­ings, pho­tographs, sculp­tures, ceram­ics, dig­i­tal art: if it’s held at a UK insti­tu­tion, it’s avail­able for your view­ing plea­sure — or your edu­ca­tion, your research, what­ev­er your pur­pose may be.

A decade into Art UK’s evo­lu­tion, one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing sec­tions of its dig­i­tal hold­ings may hard­ly con­tain any work by artists whose names you’ve heard. That’s because it’s a col­lec­tion of the UK’s murals and street art, whose dig­i­ti­za­tion began in ear­ly 2024. “The project fol­lowed the suc­cess­ful, award-win­ning sculp­ture dig­i­ti­za­tion and engage­ment project, which firm­ly estab­lished Art UK as the home for show­cas­ing the UK’s pub­lic realm art­works,” writes pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tra­cy Jenk­ins. “We have now record­ed over 6,600 murals, bring­ing the total num­ber of pub­lic art­works on the web­site to 21,400.” Dat­ing from 1000 AD to the present, these “include wall paint­ings in his­toric church­es, post-war ceram­ic and con­crete works, and con­tem­po­rary paint­ed murals and mosaics.” Col­lec­tive­ly, they remind us that, in our haste to tour the most august tem­ples of art, we ignore at our per­il the muse­ums with­out walls — or rather, the muse­ums that are walls. Enter Art UK here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Down­load 60,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Art Trips: Vis­it the Art of Cities Around the World, from Los Ange­les & Lon­don, to Venice and New York

Great Art Cities: Vis­it the Fas­ci­nat­ing, Less­er-Known Muse­ums of Lon­don & Paris

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.