Switched-On Art[s] Council England

"... Arts Council England, a publicly funded organization... owns about 7,500 works by some of Britain's most important 20th-century and contemporary visual artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney," wrote Camille Ricketts in a December 30, 2006 Wall Street Journal article.

They've just cut the Gordian Knot of being unable to display all their works at one time with one simple move: posting the entire collection online here.

Have you noticed the lines are much shorter, as well?

Starting last month, the collection began posting images of its works, with a goal of getting everything up by 2008, eventually including audio and video.

Sure, it's not the same as being there — but how many people in the world have that chance?

Consider that New York's Museum of Modern Art has posted 5,600 of its 150,000 works online, and that in 2006 its online gallery had 2 million unique visits — only 500,000 fewer than the physical museum.

Just wait till that $100 laptop hits Africa — talk about transformative....

Here's the Wall Street Journal story.

A major collection opens to the public — on the Web

Museums have a problem: Most only have the space and resources to display a fraction of the works in their collections; the rest are stored out of sight. Now, one organization is finding a way around this issue — by posting its entire collection online.

It is a project of Arts Council England, a publicly funded organization that owns about 7,500 works by some of Britain's most important 20th-century and contemporary visual artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and David Hockney. The works are loaned out to museums that request them; at any given time, only about a third of the paintings and sculptures are on display. This month, the collection's administrators have begun posting images of the works online; by 2008, the Web site will include the whole collection, and it will continue to be updated. It also will eventually include audio and video.

On the site, users can search for a particular artist or browse a scrolling reel of thumbnail photos, stopping at images that catch their eye. Clicking "Take 60" opens a page of 60 of the collection's most famous and influential works. These include Francis Bacon's seminal 1949 work "Head VI" [top], a distorted image based on a 1650 portrait of Pope Innocent IX by Velazquez, and Lucian Freud's "Girl in a Green Dress" (1954; below),



a portrait of his second wife. Each image is accompanied by a short essay on its history and significance by a curator at the Hayward Gallery, which has administered the collection since 1987.

But looking at art online is a far cry from seeing it in person. "A lot of the information just doesn't translate into an image on a computer screen," says Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff.

For several years, museums have been launching online galleries to attract wider audiences, though few have put their whole collections on the Web. New York's Museum of Modern Art has posted 5,600 of its 150,000 works online. In 2006, its online gallery has had two million unique visits — only 500,000 fewer than the physical museum.