Online Intentions

The PCF realised some years ago that the surest way of dramatically improving the public's access to the national collection of oil paintings was to put the PCF project online.

Partnering the BBC

The PCF decided it could not achieve this alone and therefore sought a partner.

It approached the BBC where the idea of working together was enthusiastically endorsed. A partnership plan was developed in late 2008 and announced in early 2009 by the Director General, Mark Thompson. Since then the two organisations have worked together closely building the site.

The PCF’s partnership with the BBC is a perfect marriage between a small charity working on behalf of the museum sector and the national public service broadcaster that runs the most popular British website in the world and has enormous audience-engagement experience.

The BBC is building the Your Paintings website at its own expense. Meanwhile, the PCF is responsible for completing the painting photography programme, maintaining the art historical information database, and enhancing the data through the Your Paintings Tagger programme.

The History of Art Department at the University of Glasgow has provided the PCF with considerable Art Historical advice.

Project Outcome

The principal outcome of the partnership with the BBC is the creation of a vibrant and highly searchable website showing the entire collection of publicly owned oil paintings across the United Kingdom.

This is the only website anywhere in the world illustrating a nation’s entire painting collection.

The Your Paintings website is free to view and is hosted on bbc.co.uk. The objective of the website will be to popularise and democratise art as well as to educate and entertain.

It launched in the summer with the aprroximately 60,000 paintings.