Since 2018, Art UK has appointed an annual Patron to help raise the profile of the charity's work.

2023 & 2024 Patron

Bob & Roberta Smith (the artist Patrick Brill) is supporting Art UK as Patron for a second year in 2024.

Bob & Roberta Smith RA is a British contemporary artist, writer, author, musician and passionate advocate for art education. Known for his 'slogan' art incorporating elements of signwriting, he is an associate professor at the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, and has curated public art projects such as Art U Need. His books include You Are An Artist and Art Makes People Powerful.

Bob & Roberta says: 'I am delighted to continue being a Patron of Art UK – I think it's brilliant. There are very few organisations in the arts that extend across the whole of the UK. Art UK is extremely important because it is not just celebrating, it's distributing these images. It seems like a resource, but actually it's active in getting images and ideas out there. Without really great cataloguing and a really great telling of stories then artworks – inanimate objects made perhaps hundreds of years ago – become unloved, and we need to fall in love with them.'

Art UK Director Andy Ellis says: 'Bob and Roberta is such an ardent and brilliant campaigner for art in schools – and also for Art UK. We are so fortunate that he is continuing as our Patron for a second year, as we roll out our landmark visual literacy initiative, The Superpower of Looking.'

2022 Patron

Russell Tovey – actor, writer and the co-founder and host of acclaimed podcast Talk Art – was the 2022 Patron of Art UK.

Russell co-hosts Talk Art with friend and gallerist Robert Diament, interviewing leading artists, curators, gallerists, and celebrities about their shared passion. Their first book Talk Art: Everything You Wanted To Ask About Contemporary Art But Were Afraid To Ask has been listed as one of The Sunday Times's Top Ten Bestsellers.

An award-winning actor, Russell has an extensive background in film, television and theatre, most recently taking a leading role in ITV/HULU drama series The Sister, from Luther creator Neil Cross. He was nominated for a 2020 Critics' Choice Award for best supporting actor for his role in the critically acclaimed BBC/HBO Drama series Years and Years written by Russell T. Davies. He also starred in Bill Condon's The Good Liar for Warner Bros. opposite Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren and will next be seen in Sony's Screen Gems romantic drama Text For You with Celine Dion and Priyanka Chopra.

Other noteworthy film and television credits include The History Boys, Sherlock, Quantico, Doctor Who and Little Dorrit. Noteworthy stage credits include Angels In America, His Dark Materials, and Howard Katz (National Theatre).

2021 Patron

Art UK was delighted to appoint Mary Beard as Art UK's 2021 Patron.

Mary Beard is one of Britain's best-known classicists and she is also Professor at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College. She has written numerous books including the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, the best-selling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome and the thought-provoking Women & Power.

Mary has presented highly-acclaimed TV series, including Meet the Romans and Rome – Empire without Limit. She hosts a BBC television arts show, Inside Culture, and is a regular media commentator. Mary was co-presenter of the BBC landmark series, Civilisations, for which she wrote an accompanying book.

She is also Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes an engaging blog, A Don's Life. Made an OBE in 2013 for services to classical scholarship, Mary was further made a Dame in 2018. Other accolades include Royal Academy Professor of Ancient Literature, Fellow of the British Academy, 2019 recipient of the J. Paul Getty medal and most recently Mary was appointed a Trustee of the British Museum.

2020 Patron

Conrad Shawcross RA was Art UK's 2020 Patron.

Imbued with an appearance of scientific rationality, Conrad Shawcross' sculptures explore subjects that lie on the borders of geometry and philosophy, physics and metaphysics.

Inspired by different technologies, the artist's structures may retain in appearance the authority of machines - yet, they remain enigmatic, filled with paradox and wonder. Some have an absurdist melancholy feel, while others tend to the sublime, substituting the purely functional for phenomenological experience.

In his work, Shawcross has paid tribute to some of the great pioneers and analysts, and considered specific moments or figures from the past. In the end, Shawcross' art questions what we take for granted and encourages us to see beyond the physical.

Shawcross has completed a number of major public commissions across the world, including Paradigm outside the Francis Crick Institute in London and the 18-metre tall Exploded Paradigm inside the atrium of the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia. He has exhibited at institutions across the world, including Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, USA, The National Gallery in London, and ARTMIA in Beijing. He is represented by Victoria Miro in London and Tucci Russo in Italy.

Find out more in this story or download the press release.

2019 Patron

Yinka Shonibare CBE was Art UK's 2019 Patron.

Yinka Shonibare CBE has become known for his exploration of colonialism and post-colonialism. Through his interdisciplinary practice – including sculpture, painting, mixed-media installations and film – Shonibare’s work examines race, class and the construction of cultural identity through a political commentary of the interrelationship between Africa and Europe. Shonibare uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities.

Born in London in 1962, Shonibare moved to Lagos at the age of three. He returned to the UK to study Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, London, where he received his Masters in Fine Art.

In 2002, the artist was commissioned to create one of his most recognised installations, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, which was included in Documenta XI. In 2010, his first public art commission Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was displayed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

In 2013 Shonibare was elected as a Royal Academician and in 2019 he was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

2018 Patron

The 2018 Art UK Patron was Cornelia Parker RA.

Cornelia Parker is well known for her large-scale, often site-specific installations. Her engagement with the fragility of existence and the transformation of matter is exemplified in two key works: Dark Matter, a suspended reconstruction of a garden shed blown up for the artist by the British Army, and Heart of Darkness, the formal arrangement of charred remains from a forest fire.

For The Metropolitan Museum's annual roof commission 2015, she created Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), a reconstruction of Hitchcock’s Psycho house made from an old red barn.

Parker works in a variety of mediums and has collaborated with institutions such as HM Customs & Excise, Royal Armouries, Madame Tussauds and HM Prisons. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010. In 2017, she was the official General Election artist appointed by the Speaker’s cross-party committee.