Art UK - Bringing together the UK’s national collection of art on one digital platform
Join Andrew Ellis, Chief Executive of Art UK for an illustrated talk exploring the benefits and challenges around bringing together the UK’s national collection of art on one digital platform. As Art UK gets closer to the point of showing millions of artworks from the 3,500 institutions already on the platform, this talk will focus on the potential around storytelling, cultural tourism, schools learning, and academic research. The talk will be illustrated with artworks from around the UK – many from less well-known art collections, alongside public sculptures and murals from the charity’s more recent digitisation programmes.
Speaker biography
Andrew Ellis has been Chief Executive of Art UK since 2003. He has responsibility for the strategic direction of the organisation, the development of partnership relationships and plays a major role in fundraising for the charity. He played a key role transforming the organisation from being a publisher of hardcopy catalogues of oil paintings in public ownership to being the digital platform of the UK’s national art collection bringing together almost 3,500 institutions on one platform. With colleagues at Collections Trust and the University of Leicester, he helped found and launch the Museum Data Service in 2024.
