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Launch of Art UK Sculpture in the Flaxman Gallery

By Benjamin Meunier, on 22 June 2017

MichaelStatue_12On Wednesday 21st June, I was delighted to co-host with Nina Pearlman, Manager of UCL Art Museum, the launch of Art UK’s ambitious project to catalogue the UK’s sculpture collection, supported by a £2.8m National Lottery Grant. The event took place in the Flaxman Gallery and Portico, fitting surroundings for a scheme designed to improve access to the hidden sculptures across the UK. Indeed, we recently completed a project to replace the inner doors to the gallery, so that later this summer, the external doors of the Portico will be opened on a daily basis and visitors on campus will be able to see into the gallery, as well as providing views out towards the Front Quad for Library users and staff inside the gallery.

Eilish McGuinness, Director of Operations from the Heritage Lottery Fund also gave a speech, outlining their support for the scheme and highlighting the impact which HLF have been able to make thanks to the funds raised by people playing the National Lottery.

Thanks to this project, the UK is set to become the first country in the world to create a free-to-access online photographic showcase of its publicly owned sculpture. In this highly ambitious initiative, around 170,000 sculptures – located inside galleries, museums and public buildings and outdoors in parks, streets and squares – will be displayed on the artuk.org website for enjoyment, learning and research.

As you may already know, the sculptures from the Flaxman Gallery itself are digitised as part of The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Digital Library which draws together rare books and art works related to Greek history, archaeology and culture in Special Collections and UCL’s museums (including the Flaxman plasters) http://digital-collections.ucl.ac.uk/R/HDGRYJD6S5651SAFVJRSG73PVD6V87K3L9Q8TVY3JFT5MJUGU1-04447?func=collections-result&collection_id=3204

More about Art UK and the digitisation programme
This is Art UK’s second major digitisation programme, and follows another world-first – its internationally acclaimed oil paintings project which has made over 200,000 publicly owned oil paintings from some 3,000 British collections freely available online. The national sculpture collection is drawn from almost every country and era, offering insights into cultures as diverse as twelfth-century Nigeria, Victorian Britain, Tokugawa-period Japan, Renaissance Italy and 1960s New York – a truly global collection and arguably the greatest in existence. However, a significant proportion is not on display, and very little of it has been photographed. Furthermore, many public monuments have not been thoroughly catalogued and are at risk of decay or of being lost to public record. Art UK’s three-year project is focusing on sculpture dating from the last thousand years, held in public collections and locations across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. All objects – irrespective of condition or perceived quality – will be recorded and most will be photographed, some in 3D.The first photographic records will appear on the Art UK website in early 2018. Once online, Art UK’s Art Detective network of crowd-sourced expertise will help collections fill in missing information about the sculptures.A UK-wide training and volunteering programme, benefitting nearly 2,000 people across the UK, will offer many opportunities to gain photography and digitisation skills as well as other museum-centred skills.The total cash cost of the project is expected to be £3.8m (including in-kind partner contributions it amounts to £5.2m). The Heritage Lottery Fund has generously agreed to provide £2.8m of the funding, and Art UK has successfully raised the remaining £1m from a variety of donors. These include Arts Council England, the Scottish Government, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, several other grant-giving trusts and over 70 individual and corporate donors (see artuk.org for a full list ).Andrew Ellis, Art UK Director, said ‘ This project has been four years in the planning . The result will be an astonishing digital showcase for the national collection of sculpture in all it s rich and varied glory. All of us at Art UK are deeply grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund and all the other donors who have made this huge undertaking possible.

Stuart Hobley, Head of Heritage Lottery Fund for London, said Wherever you are in the UK you can find public sculpture, quietly existing within our parks, museums and squares. Sculpture can be extraordinary, emotive, even challenging and yet, many of us are unaware that this sort of world-class art work is on our doorstep and free to access. Thanks to National Lottery players we re able to help Art UK raise awareness of our sculpture heritage by developing its interactive website with exciting activity to get people involved, inspired and exploring this fascinating collection.

Art UK

Established in 2002, Art UK (previously known as the Public Catalogue Foundation) is a dynamic arts charity with a national and global reach. We are working to transform access to the UK’s publicly owned art collection, much of which is not on display. We do this through digitising artworks and creating exciting opportunities for public interaction with art both online and offline. Our work contributes to the promotion and sustainability of the UK cultural sector and facilitates collaboration between cultural organisations and the public at large. Successful partnership and collaboration are a hallmark of the organisation. Our website, www.artuk.org , is a digital showcase for the UK’s public art collections and vital digital infrastructure for the UK’s cultural sector.

Go to www.artuk.org to find out more and join the conversation on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using #ArtUKsculpturevulture

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