ART In Yorkshire was so successful last year that the number of participating galleries is expanding from 18 to 27 for the second programme of exhibitions.

Andy Warhol, Joan Miro, Sarah Lucas and Fiona Rae are among the artists whose work will be seen in Yorkshire this year as part of Art In Yorkshire Goes Modern.

Funded by the Arts Council England, the second year’s shows take the theme of Modernism in the UK, on account of Yorkshire’s strong involvement in the development of this artistic movement.

As with last year’s inaugural venture, supported by the Tate galleries, the 2012 programme is led by York Museums Trust, whose chief executive, Janet Barnes, says: “Last year we launched Art In Yorkshire for the first time and it proved to be a huge success, with many more people visiting galleries throughout Yorkshire.

“The idea behind this year’s programme remains the same: to encourage more people to explore the rich variety of the public art galleries in Yorkshire during 2012. “The exhibitions will focus on contemporary and modern art, including some of art’s most iconic names, but we also hope the project will encourage people to discover the treasures in the permanent collections of the galleries involved.”

Reflecting on the lessons learnt from last year, Janet says: “Simple ideas are always the best. Finding out about art shows can be quite a faff – you have to be really committed – but by putting it so clearly on the table, we must have encouraged people not only to go to galleries but to go to other galleries outside their home city.

“Then there was the factor of The Hepworth opening at Wakefield, encouraging new people into the county. From there they might go to Leeds Art Gallery or the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

“Branding it with the Tate and having big names, like Hockney at York Art Gallery, all helped as big names mean that people know they’re going to see something that makes their journey worthwhile.”

Janet says the Art In Yorkshire organisers also discovered the power of the App, the online application. “It was a completely new world to us, but once you get the hang of it, you’re off,” she says. “We did some filming of artists for the App last year and we’ll be doing more of that this year, so we’re moving to a different way of marketing, which is becoming more digital.

“Now we have films and interviews telling people about artists before they even come to a show, which is something that wouldn’t have been encouraged before when there was a mystique about art that curators didn’t want to discourage. Now we want people to explore the art in advance, and that demystifies and deepens the experience.”

Buoyed by the public reaction to last year’s Art In Yorkshire shows, and by other galleries asking how they could become involved, York Museums Trust has been able to expand the programme in 2012 after Arts Council funding of £100,000 each year was confirmed for the next three years.

“This funding has been given to 16 museum services or consortia across England, and we were one, along with Leeds, and the important thing was that part of our bid was that the York Museums Trust would have a regional role and one of our projects would be Art In Yorkshire,” says Janet.

The £100,000 goes towards marketing and co-ordinating the involvement of the 27 participating galleries, and not towards running each individual exhibition.

Among those shows are Gordon Baldwin’s Objects For A Landscape at York Art Gallery, featuring more than 100 sculptural ceramics from the past 50 years by this distinguished British artist, until June 10.

Brazilian installation artist Laura Belem’s The Temple Of A Thousand Bells will go on show at York St Mary’s, in Castlegate, from May 25 to November 4.

Miro: Sculptor, the first large-scale exhibition of Joan Miro’s sculpture to be held in Britain, is at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park until January 6 next year; Fiona Rae’s 17 paintings in her Maybe You Can Live On The Moon In The Next Century show will be at Leeds Art Gallery until August 26; iconic Late Self-Portraits by Andy Warhol can be seen at the Graves Gallery in Sheffield until December 1 and more works by Warhol will go on show at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull from June 2 to January 13 next year.

Taking part too are Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate; National Railway Museum, York; Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole; Shandy Hall, Coxwold; The Hepworth Wakefield; and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield.

A booklet outlining all the exhibitions is available at participating galleries. An updated App is being released shortly after this week’s launch. For a full list of all the galleries taking part visit art.yorkshire.com