State of the art Success for plan to record every public sculpture in UK

Between two fields on the outskirts of a 1960s new town in Northumberland is a startling, track-stopping sculpture passed by on a regular basis by hardly anyone: it's a 15ft spoon.

- Mark Brown

Outside Dorset County hospital is a vizsla dog, always well behaved because it was made by Elisabeth Frink in bronze. On the Isle of Man the three disco dudes swaggering down the promenade are the Bee Gees. The spectacular view from a Nando's in Harlow, meanwhile, is a beautiful bronze of Eve, which Auguste Rodin intended as part of his Gates of Hell project in Paris.

In total there are more than 13,500 public sculptures dotted around the UK, an art education charity has discovered as it announced the success of a project to photograph and digitise every single one of them.

Art UK has already documented the 200,000-plus oil paintings in Britain's public collections. In 2019 it announced it was turning its attention to sculpture and it has now completed its dizzyingly ambitious project to document all the UK's outdoor sculptures, whether that's Cramlington's giant spoon or the 175 statues, fountains, bandstands and clocktowers dedicated to Queen Victoria.

It felt like a thrilling moment, said Andrew Ellis, the director of Art UK. "This project... is not only a significant milestone for our charity, but also anyone who cares about public art or simply wants to find out more about that sculpture they walk past every day."