Curate your own online exhibition

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Art UK announces the launch of Curations, a revolutionary free digital tool allowing anyone, anywhere to create an online exhibition.

Monday 18 May 2020 marks #InternationalMuseumsDay, to celebrate London Art Fair will be showcasing each one of our previous museum partners, sharing their highlights from previous Fairs, their current projects, exhibitions and online events.

Since 2014, London Art Fair has collaborated with an annual museum partner, to showcase key works from their collection at the Fair. Starting the week is our 2018 partner, Art UK who staged an exhibition created from the nation’s public art collections: ‘Art of the Nation: Five Artists Choose’.

Five artists Haroon Mirza, Oscar Murillo, Mat Collishaw, Sonia Boyce and Rose Wylie, were invited to take part and were encouraged to make a personal selection of five works from the Art UK website.
Curations is free to use and has been developed by cultural education charity Art UK to encourage people to engage with the nation’s art. The tool allows anyone to choose artworks for their exhibition from Art UK, the online home for the national art collection. 250,000 artworks by 46,000 artists from 3,300 collection venues are on the platform – numbers that are growing all the time.

Democratising art

Anyone can add commentaries or notes to their Curations, organise their artworks and choose from a selection of exhibition display modes. Curations can be kept private or published publicly and can be shared on social media through the hashtags #CurateYourOwn and #ArtUKCurations.

A vital resource for collections

Art UK’s Partner collections can share actual or imagined exhibitions with a global online audience of over 2.5 million annual users. During lockdown, with many exhibitions postponed or cancelled, this will be vital. Curations will broaden access to art collections and help institutions reach new audiences. It will ensure physical exhibitions are digitally preserved for the future.
Curations will help to unite the UK’s digital art collections in innovative ways, showing solidarity across the sector and supporting Towards a National Collection’s new #CollectionsUnited campaign.
The launch on 18th May coincides with International Museum Day – an annual campaign celebrating the important role of museums in serving society and its development

A tool for learning

Curations will support learners of all ages and abilities. Teachers will be able to use the tool to plan lessons and activities – encouraging pupils to explore new themes or connections. Students can use it to support their studies and present their own work.

Start curating now

You can view Curations here and make your own here.
Andrew Ellis, Art UK’s Director, says: ‘Curations is an example of what is possible when you digitally
connect the national art collection. It means museums and the public alike can now bring together
artworks from institutions across the country, tell the stories behind the art, and share their Curations
with others. Art UK is all about democratising the nation’s art collection. Curations takes this a step
further.’
The development and build of Curations has been generously supported by the Ampersand
Foundation. Curations was built by the London agency Keepthinking.

Art UK and lockdown

Art UK is playing a major role keeping the nation’s art collection open for viewing during lockdown.
Curations is just part of Art UK’s overall strategy to support collections and the public at this time.

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