UK’s new digital archive to preserve murals, street art

Art U.K. aims to digitize and curate images of a transient art form and is on a three-year mission to collect images of nearly 5,000 murals and make them available on its website

A project led by the cultural and education charity Art U.K. is creating a digital archive to enhance and preserve murals, an inherently ephemeral art form.

Around 5,000 murals, three-dimensional reliefs, friezes, and sculptures from across the U.K. will be included in the project, which aims to draw attention to street art and its role in local communities.

It will feature lesser-known artists as well as leading names such as the British muralist Bansky.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation and the materials used to create them can result in such artworks being ephemeral in nature,” Deputy Chief Executive of Art U.K Katey Goodwin said in a statement.

Creating an online archive will help solve this dilemma by preserving street art without physically interfering with it, Goodwin said.

In 2021, the organization undertook a similar project, eventually digitizing more than 50,000 public sculptures.

Source: Newsroom