Maps of Paintings

Did you know that since the National Gallery acquired it, Claude Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ has been exhibited in 14 different cities across four continents? Conversely, Botticelli's ‘Venus and Mars’ has lived a much more stationary life, having only departed The National Gallery once in 150 years.  

From art historical research and provenance history to scientific information about pigments and painting techniques, museums and galleries house vast amounts of data. This data is extremely valuable and helps us continue to learn about our collections. One way to use this data is by mapping it into visualisations, such as graphs, charts and maps. By doing this we are able to reveal patterns and gain new and valuable insights into the Gallery’s collection.  

Exploring our collections in this way also helps us to unlock access to  hidden data for our audiences – for example, through stories, interactive experiences and data maps. Maps of Paintings is an experimental project to show one of many ways in which this might work. 

Maps of Paintings is a prototype digital experience, focused on data surrounding the Gallery’s National Treasures – 12 of the nation’s best-loved paintings from the Gallery’s collection which were lent to 12 venues across the UK in 2024. This was part of the programme of events to celebrate the National Gallery’s 200th anniversary. In this project, a network map has been created for each painting to show the locations where it has been displayed since we acquired it.  

Join us in celebrating 200 years of bringing people and paintings together with this experimental mapping project. Take a look at where these paintings went on display as part of National Treasures and find where they have travelled over the last few decades. 

Click the link below to open the experience and select a painting to explore its journey. 

Maps of Paintings

How did you become a data artist?  

I’ve always felt a need to document everything—an unstoppable urge to track, process, and reveal the world's varied and unseen patterns. It all started in childhood with an exercise my teachers called ‘Presenza’ (presence), a daily sketching activity to mark attendance in primary school. Over time, I reclaimed this practice, capturing complex patterns that I catalogued and organised like data: abstract representations of the behaviour of people, cities, and objects. I wanted to tell these stories but I've never been good with words. Data allowed me to find new ways to express and read phenomena and emotions like grief, urban soundscapes, unrequited love, scents, and sleeping patterns. My work now unifies all these diverse meanings, unveiling hidden messages in daily rituals or serving as testimony to a moment, like a photograph.  

What type of data do you work with – is anything off limits?  

I like to visualise what cannot be seen – data linked to invisible events like sleep, soundscapes, movements, scents, music, and even the heartbeat. Working with ephemeral or qualitative data like this represents a challenge but also an opportunity to conduct research and understand the nature of things more deeply. I use this data to create poetry from science and transform numerical sequences into a story. It could be mine, yours, that of an international brand, a family business, or a museum. I enjoy working and experimenting with archives and catalogues, especially those made of images, text, sound, or other intangible things like perfumes and flavours. I’d like to think that there’s almost nothing off limits.  

What interested you in working on Maps of Paintings?  

First of all, my love for art. Then, making art accessible: through National Treasures, more than half the UK population has been within an hour's journey of a National Gallery masterpiece. Maps of Paintings is a storytelling project rooted in learnings from John Berger's book, ‘Ways of Seeing’. For me, this project reveals the invisible, and shows ways of seeing paintings that we had never imagined before. I want to focus on accessibility and on how we make these paintings, and information about them, accessible to people. When I introduced my work to the National Gallery team, the audience was fully engaged, asking many questions. And when the opportunity arose to work on a digital experience, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to use data to challenge the way we traditionally look at art.’

I wanted to put two actors at the centre of the story. First, the viewers – in Maps of Paintings people can search for their location, putting them always at the centre of the narrative with the paintings orbiting around them. Second, the relationship between a painting, which is silent and still, and the dynamism of the movements and travels these 12 masterpieces undertook. What I like the most about Maps of Paintings is that it isn’t about the past. It’s about the present and maybe the future. It’s an archive viewed through the personal lenses of the viewers, with their experiences and stories.  

As a data artist, what are your thoughts on museum data and its potential?  

I’m fascinated by the quantity of information museums have, not just historical information about paintings or sculptures, but also how the information is organised and used by both internal teams and the public. Technological advancements, particularly in the realm of mechanical reproduction, have altered the nature, reception and purpose of art in modern society as stated in Walter Benjamin’s, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. To me, there’s potential worth investigating.

All of this data represents a huge opportunity for museums and art institutions to engage with the viewer in a more active way, creating a real connection between art and the public. In this way, art is not there just to be seen but also to be understood and explored in a different way. For example, when I first demoed the prototype to the National Gallery team, their initial reaction was visceral and immediate. The focus wasn't on the technique or the artist. Instead, it was on the hidden network of locations and movements made over many years and on how those related to each viewer, even on a personal level. It created space for stories. A silent yet indelible trace of cultures and narratives drawing new shapes and identities. For once, the role of how art is experienced is reversed: people become the main object of art while the art becomes the observer.  

If you could create any data visualisation experience for a museum, what would it be?  

I’d love to explore and work on archives made of intangible data like images, sounds, scents, pigments, and colours, to revive the beauty of this hidden information. I’d also like to explore the relationship between science for art and art for science to reveal hidden connections and stories. For example, John Constable included dates and weather data in his works. Thanks to a classification system he adopted – Luke Howard's cloud classification system – he was able to accurately paint rainbows and clouds. I’d love to use data and information like these to reveal similar stories and make them accessible to the public. This would create personalised experiences but also make all of these hidden layers of information visible.