Unfortunately, Art Detective has been paused due to insufficient funding to run the service as we would like. All 887 discussions and more than 22,000 individual submissions remain accessible on our website, but sadly no new discussion or submission comments can be accepted.
The links in the Art Detective Resources pages remain live, including to more than 200 artist biographies produced through Art Detective and to a selective list of sources useful for researching the history of works of art.
All of us at Art UK would like to thank the thousands of contributors over the last ten years for so generously helping to improve knowledge of the UK’s national collection of art. Art Detective has provided new information on works of art owned by around 1,200 individual collections, enabling them to update and improve their own catalogue records. In ten years, more than 10,000 data enhancements have been provided, ranging from important new artist attributions and sitter identities to spelling/dating/provenance updates.
Art Detective aims to improve knowledge of the UK's public art collection. It is an award-winning, free online network that connects public art collections with specialists and other members of the public.
This Subject Specialist Network brings together expertise from art historians, curators, academics, dealers and members of the public to support public art collections. The discussions are open to all: registered users can propose topics and comment on any discussion. The group leaders are experts in their fields, often with an art history background, or specific local or technical knowledge. We also have links to five other specialist research groups: The British Art Network, Understanding British Portraits, The Maritime Curators Group, European Paintings pre-1900 and The Costume Society.
Aside from running the discussions that bring outside expertise to bear on a wide range of art-historical enquiries, Art Detective staff resolve straightforward enquiries directly with public art collections without the need for external contributions.
Hundreds of updates are sent to public art collections every year, from small but important details, such as amending a digit in a date, to major new artist attributions.
Find out more about how Art Detective supports UK collections.