Famous Scots art to go online
The charity is in talks about an ambitious plan to make sure that its art treasures are digitised and put on a new website, which, it hopes, will encourage visitors to the properties where they hang, as well as increasing knowledge about its visual art collections.
The trust, which recently sold its traditional home in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square for £8.7 million and is moving to new offices in Hermiston Quay in the west of the city, has more than 50,000 items in its collections across the country and nearly 50 properties with significant art collections.
Works by Sir Henry Raeburn, Allan Ramsay, Alexander Nasmyth and the Scottish Colourists, among many others, will be made viewable away from the walls where they currently hang.
The plan will be a collaboration between the trust, the Public Catalogue Foundation and the BBC, which is likely to host the website.
The entire digitisation plan is hoped to be finished in time for the London Olympics in 2012.