The BBC in partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) announced the launch of Your Paintings, a project to create a complete catalogue of every oil painting in the national collection, on a dedicated website.
According to artdaily, in all, the national collection amounts to some 200,000 works, held in 3,000 galleries, museums, libraries and public institutions all over the country, making it probably one of the largest and most diverse collections of paintings in the world.
The first phase of Your Paintings went live on June 24, with over 60,000 paintings by 15,000 artists from 860 collections. The site will feature online selections made by well known artists, historians and celebrities including Yinka Shonibare, Rory Bremner, Frank Skinner, Dan Snow, Tracey Cox, Matt Baker, Gus Casely Hayford, Mary Beard, Alastair Sooke, Monty Don and The Reduced Shakespeare Company encouraging the public to take part in the development of this monumental project, tagging works, and helping to classify paintings as they are uploaded to the site over the next eighteen months towards completion by the end of 2012.
The paintings are drawn from public collections in every part of the country, big and small, from the most famous to the completely unknown. They include the UK's national museums and galleries, regional collections, the National Trust, as well as the less obvious public collection like those in universities, council buildings, hospitals and fire stations.
New works and more functionality will be added to the site as the project evolves. As the project develops the site will present a body of knowledge and learning resources that will give everyone the opportunity to discover the richness and diversity of the great works of art in public ownership.
