Digital experiences at the National Gallery: A glimpse at the future

The National Gallery today (18 March 2025) unveiled a wealth of new digital experiences, created and enhanced to celebrate the Gallery’s Bicentenary. 

200 Paintings for 200 Years, National Gallery Imaginarium, and a new iteration of The Keeper of Paintings, now augmenting the reality of the Roden Centre for Creative Learning, mark the Gallery’s commitment to consistently driving innovation through digital technology. Each one has involved extensive collaboration with experts across a wide set of artistic fields.

National Gallery Imaginarium

The National Gallery has created a world that takes inspiration from the physical Gallery settings and broadens out to a more expanded place – our visitors’ imaginations. 'National Gallery Imaginarium' is a new digital art experience for a worldwide audience that puts visitors in dialogue with great paintings. Visitors will be prompted to step inside this new digital room to get closer than ever before to some of your favourite paintings, to imagine the painting’s world and the artist’s inspirations and offers the opportunity to see how other visitors have interpreted the same work. The experience is designed to function either as a solo experience, or as the catalyst for conversations between families, friends, or teachers.

'It’s important for the Gallery to deepen the engagement with the paintings that our remote visitors can experience', says John Stack, Director of Digital Innovation and Technology at the National Gallery. 'We know that slow looking has great benefits for deeper insights, emotional connections, and mindfulness and wellbeing. So, it makes perfect sense to us to use new technologies to bring that experience to visitors that can’t spend all the time they would like to with our paintings in person, to spark their imagination and inspire new perspectives.'

'National Gallery Imaginarium' has been developed with strategic design agency Fabrique and digital product studio Q42, both part of Eidra. It also features a bespoke introduction from poet and novelist Sir Ben Okri, a newly commissioned soundscape from sound artist Nick Ryan.

200 Paintings for 200 Years

For the first time, the Gallery is making freely available 200 paintings’ catalogue entries, totalling 2.2 million words of academic research, combining information already held (but only available on request or in select publications) with new findings brought to light with recent re-examination. 
With these catalogue entries, we are sharing 2,700 images, including 75 x-rays, 155 infrared images and over 250 photomicrographs. We are also presenting information on the frames surrounding these same 200 paintings, the earliest of which dates to the 13th century, which has not been previously available to the public.

These technical and in-depth essays showcase everything we know about our paintings. They discuss in detail the subject matter, authorship, provenance and art historical significance of the works. New information based on the re-examination of each picture is combined with technical photographs. 
New scholarship presented as part of '200 Paintings for 200 Years' includes research on Raphael (1483 – 1520)'s Portrait of Pope Julius II (1511), one of the 38 paintings first purchased by the Government that marked the foundation of a National Gallery in 1824. For the first time, we have now been able to reconstruct and show what previous imaging processes had suggested the painting’s original background would have looked like,

Christine Riding, Director of Collections and Research at the National Gallery, said: 'The National Gallery has enjoyed a long and esteemed reputation as a leading centre for research. This aspect of our work has enabled us, to enrich our understanding, to communicate with depth and authority, and to ensure that the paintings in our care are safe for generations to come. This project is a significant milestone in making freely accessible the wealth of information that we hold.'

As the Gallery looks to its third century, digital innovation is constantly being pursued as an enhancement to in-person experiences. 'The Keeper of Paintings', our augmented reality game for children and families, has just launched a fourth experience as part of our new Roden Centre for Creative Learning – now part of a character driven 'extended universe' taking place both in the Gallery and off site. 

The new iteration, co-created with children, is embedded throughout the building to enhance the physical experience. Throughout the Bicentenary year digital experiences have formed a cornerstone of engaging with the public, including the far-reaching success of 200 Creators that has contributed to the doubling of the Gallery’s digital reach over the year. 

A digital visitor experience will be integrated at the heart of the new Sainsbury Wing entrance, due to open to the public on 10 May 2025, including a connected canvas of high-resolution screens that will bring the Gallery’s paintings and expert knowledge to the fore.

Digital storytelling and innovation have been a focus for development at the National Gallery over the last five years, which has been greatly enabled through the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gallery’s digital partner for NG200, marking our anniversary year. All these projects are united by a commitment to human-centred design and meeting our audiences where they are – whether they have experienced the Gallery before or are coming to us for the first time.'

Notes to editors

The National Gallery is one of the greatest art galleries in the world. Founded by Parliament in 1824, the Gallery houses the nation’s collection of paintings in the Western European tradition from the late 13th to the early 20th century. The collection includes works by Bellini, Cezanne, Degas, Leonardo, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rubens, Titian, Turner, Van Dyck, Van Gogh and Velázquez. The Gallery’s key objectives are to enhance the collection, care for the collection and provide the best possible access to visitors. Admission free. More at nationalgallery.org.uk 

On 10 May 2024 the National Gallery was 200 years old, and we started our Bicentenary celebrations, a year-long festival of art, creativity and imagination, marking two centuries of bringing people and paintings together.

Later in the spring the Gallery will open a new entrance to the Sainsbury Wing, and a new Supporters’ House, as part of NG200: Welcome, a suite of capital projects celebrating the Bicentenary.

More information and book tickets for events at nationalgallery.org.uk

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Bloomberg Philanthropies supported these projects as the NG200 digital partner.

Bloomberg Philanthropies invests in 700 cities and 150 countries around the world to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people. The organization focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: the Arts, Education, Environment, Government Innovation, and Public Health. 
As part of its longstanding commitment to supporting digital innovation in the arts, the Bloomberg Connects app offers free digital guides to cultural organisations around the world. With dynamic content exclusive to each partner organisation, the app provides a range of features including video, audio and text; expert commentary; and wayfinding maps.

Eidra is a global consultancy collective that combines best in breed expertise in creativity, engineering and data to build meaningful digital products that inspire, educate and surprise users. Born in the Nordics and headquartered in Stockholm, Eidra has gathered kindred agencies around the world, like digital product studio Q42 and strategic design agency Fabrique from the Netherlands. For over 25 years, Q42 and Fabrique have worked with world-leading museums and cultural heritage institutions including the Rijksmuseum, the Design Museum, the Tate and the Van Gogh museum to present collections, tell stories, sell tickets and build brands.
https://eidra.com

Sir Ben Okri is the Nigerian-born poet, cultural activist, and author of 13 novels, including the Booker Prize-winning 'The Famished Road', the first in a trilogy, and 'Astonishing the Gods', which was selected as one of the BBC’s ‘100 novels that shaped our world’, as well as collections of poetry, short stories, plays and essays. His work has been translated into more than 27 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won numerous international prizes. His poem following the Grenfell Tower tragedy was widely viewed on television and on social media. He was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was awarded an OBE in 2001 and a Knighthood in 2023.

For more information and images

Imogen Sebba, Press Manager NG200, imogen.sebba@nationalgallery.org.uk 

National Gallery Press Office  press.external@nationalgallery.org.uk

Publicity images can be obtained from https://press.nationalgallery.org.uk/