The National Portrait Gallery in London. © National Portrait Gallery

The Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London has made a call-out for all those who hold public collections of portraits in the UK to help build a national database.

Sandy Nairne made the appeal on behalf of ‘Understanding British Portraiture’, a group set up some of the country’s regional museums, galleries, libraries and archives.

The group is a new ‘Subject Specialist Network’ (SSN) – a network that brings together experts from the culture and heritage sector to share their knowledge and work together on common aims. The scheme is part of Renaissance in the Regions, a programme implemented by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) to benefit regional museums.

Understanding British Portraiture encourages the study and enjoyment of portraiture, and needs help from partners around the country to create a database of all the portraiture collections in the UK.

“This is an ambitious task," said Mr Nairne. "We hope to gather information on portraits that form part of major art collections, as well as the smaller and less well-known collections, comprising just one or two examples perhaps, in the care of libraries, archives, societies, charities and private companies or houses.”

Understanding British Portraiture will add to the resources on Cornucopia, which indexes thousands of collections.

The SSN is also on the look out for anyone who has relevant expertise, be they curators, researchers, educators or academics, to include their details in the database for the possibility of their sharing skills and knowledge that could enhance collections.

If you are responsible for a portrait collection, you can register it for inclusion on the database by visiting www.collectionslink.org.uk/portraiture. If you have experience of working with portraits and would like to register your expertise, fill out the form at www.ssnq.org.uk/?p=7. Any further queries can be sent to ssnportraiture@npg.org.uk.

Deadline for registering participation is March 31 2008.

The database will be made available via the Cornucopia website, and a separate website will be created for Understanding British Portraiture including useful information for museum professionals.

Understanding British Portraiture is being coordinated by the National Portrait Gallery in partnership with the National Trust, the South West Museums Hub, the North East Museums Hub, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.