The Fan Museum is delighted to announce the launch of a new partnership with Art UK, the ‘online showcase for art in every UK public collection’.  The project facilitates broader digital access to the Museum’s outstanding collections and spotlights our treasures on a platform which attracts a global audience of art, history and culture enthusiasts.

Our dedicated Art UK collection page features more than seventy fans from the private collection of the Museum’s Founder, Hélène Alexander and The Fan Museum Trust Collection. Each fan is beautifully photographed and enriched with detailed descriptions of its imagery, design, manufacture and context. This is the first time that many of these fans are displayed online and the overall selection spans more than 400+ years of mostly Western fan history & culture.

Collection highlights are numerous and include, for example, a folding fan dating from the latter part of the eighteenth century titled Allegory of Science and Astronomy. The painted leaf depicts Urania, the Muse of Astronomy seated next to Galileo Galilei, the renowned Italian astronomer. Father Time and Apollo hover above, and putti are shown playing with various scientific apparatuses. Look closely at the front facing guard and you’ll see that it has been set with a functioning thermometer – one of the scientific instruments depicted on the leaf. The person who first carried this fine quality novelty fan would have done so for practical reasons (fans being foremost cooling devices) but also to demonstrate, within their social milieu, knowledge and appreciation of scientific enquiry.

The Fan Museum’s Curator, Jacob Moss says: the Museum appreciates the opportunity to highlight its treasures on Art UK and we encourage everyone to explore our collections page and enjoy the outstanding artistry & of fans throughout the ages.

CLICK HERE to explore The Fan Museum’s collections on Art UK