Hundreds of great works of art are gathering dust in the backrooms of public buildings. Now, writes Dan Carrier, comes a scheme to catalogue them all

THEY gather dust in storerooms. They sit on lonely corridors, ignored by the workers who shuffle past. They grace offices and are so much part of the furniture the staff think of them as part of the wallpaper.
Public buildings across the country have a stock of art works to grace their walls – and it is not just places such as government ministries, universities and hospitals that own work. Places such as fire and police stations also have them squirreled away – and hidden in a number of back rooms are long-forgotten works by greatest names in British art.
Now the Slade School of Art – based at University College London in Gower Street – has published a catalogue of the works they own.
Collated by art historian Dr Emma Chambers, an expert on Camden Town artists Walter Sickert and Augustus John, the catalogue includes 750 pieces that the university has collected from students and benefactors over the past 150 years.
“The UK holds in its galleries and civic buildings arguably the greatest publicly owned collection of oil paintings in the world,” says Dr Chambers. But much of this publicly owned body of art is hidden from view: we occasionally hear of the Old Masters that are squabbled over by newly appointed ministers, but otherwise what our civic authorities have bought, had donated or simply acquired over the years is not well known. An example of this is the Rembrandt that showed up in a broom cupboard in a Camden hospital – it was news to the staff there that they’d be collecting their mops from a spot next to a valuable painting.
And, as Dr Chambers explains, the body of public art in Britain is in a tangle: no one really knows what is where.
She said: “Too many paintings across the country are held in storage, usually because there are insufficient funds to and space to shown them.
“Very few galleries have created a complete photographic record of their paintings, let alone a comprehensive illustrated catalogue of their collections. In short, what is publicly owned is not publicly accessible.”
But now, a group of art historians want to remedy this. A new charity, the Public Catalogue Foundation, has been established to create a complete record of the nation’s publicly owned art. They plan to publish catalogues – and eventually set up a website so the world can see the scale of Britain’s art legacy. And cash raised from the sale of catalogues will go towards restoring paintings that are owned by the public.
Dr Chambers has put together a catalogue of the paintings owned by University college London and the Slade School of Art. It includes works by Walter Sickert, Augustus John, and Hampstead’s Paula Rega and Sam Carter.
Her institute is in a unique position, because the alumni of the college is such that they have either painted incredible works themselves or have had the clout to donate works.
The UCL art collection alone has 750 paintings, mainly by British artists and dating from the 17th century to the present day – and now the college is building a dedicated gallery in Gordon Street in Bloomsbury to house the work. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant has been secured, and the college hopes to raise enough through donations to match it, and have the doors opening to the public by 2009.
Dr Chamber said: “It includes 19th and 20th- century portraits of the founders of the university, eminent UCL academics and senior staff.”
This makes the collection a unique archive of the university’s history.
Founded in 1871 to copy the type of art training that had made artists from the French Academy world renowned, the Slade has produced some of Britain’s best known painters. Many of their works have ended up in the portfolio owned by the college.
Dr Chambers explains this is what makes the collection so unique. “There are really two roles this collection plays,” she says.
“They were collected for college history – they are part of our archive. They are also by great artists. The mix is amazing – some of them are quite standard portraits, while others are very good. There is a real variety.”
And the catalogue scheme will make the work of art historians much easier. Dr Chambers explains: “One of the things that is the most difficult thing about art history is finding the works.
“To find out what artists have done and to find out where they are being kept is real headache and can take years of painstaking research. The foundation will create an amazing resource.”
And putting together the catalogue has revealed a number of things: it not only is a chronological catalogue of works showing what the college owns, it also provides a year by year study of what students thought was in vogue at the time of their final year.
Dr Chambers says it also speaks volumes about the state of the British art world.
She said: “For me, one of the things about the collection is the large number of women artists in it. They are under represented in other collections. Because it is a body of student work it means there is a level playing field – in the art world, the opportunities for men have always been greater and that shows in other collections – but not ours. Here it is 50/50.”
And her favourite works are by a woman: Hampstead resident Paula Rego.
She added: “She is an amazing strong artist – she deals with interesting issues about the body.”
And containing work by students who went on to make their names, the collection is worth a fortune – but how much, Dr Chambers does not want to be drawn on.
She said: “The worth of public art is stratospheric – impossible to judge, and the same goes for UCL. But because we own it into perpetuity, and as a museum so there are safeguards against selling any of it, it is really neither here not there how much it must be worth.
“But that is what is so good about it: we are guardians of the collection and we are simply looking after them for future generations.”