‘We’ve scratched the surface’: mission to digitise UK public art reaches 1m entries

Detail from Gwen John’s Flowers in a Jug from the National Museum Wales. Photograph: Rhian Israel/Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales/Art UK

From a bronze Rodin sculpture of the naked Eve outside a Nando’s in Harlow to more than 6,000 artworks by JMW Turner, to a crumpled-up piece of A4 paper owned by Manchester Art Gallery, the UK’s public art collection is a wonderful and varied thing.

It is huge, as demonstrated by the charity Art UK, which has announced it has reached a million artworks on its database and appointed a new chair who said: “We’ve only scratched the surface.”