Unlocking Collections

Southampton City Art Gallery has successfully secured a £26,000 National Lottery project grant to digitise a major part of the art collection in partnership with Southampton Solent University. The project is being supported using public funding by Arts Council England, through its Unlocking Collections campaign within National Lottery Project Grants, set out to enable museums to develop their collections-based work and increase public engagement with their collections.

The project will digitise around 1,000 works on paper from the collection, making them available on the Art UK website and on the Gallery’s website and social media channels, keeping our collection visible while the Gallery is being refurbished.

The digitisation has already started and below are some examples of works that have been photographed already.

We have recently digitised a selection of wartime drawings by the celebrated Norman Thelwell (1923 – 2024), which were gifted to the gallery by the artists son and daughter.

See the drawings and find more about Thelwell here.