What's on

Smartify Audio Tours

Our new audio tours highlight some of the most unique objects from our global collection. We recognise art as alive and have created two immersive audio experiences to help bring it to life for you.

Power Plants: Intoxicants, Stimulants and Narcotics

For millennia people have used the psychoactive properties of plants as an integral part of social, ceremonial and religious life. The show will reference global artefacts that are connected with the traditional consumption of tobacco and snuff, betel nut, kava, tea and palm wine, alongside an exploration of the sacred, hallucinogenic cactus, peyote.

14 September - 2 February 2025

Ayahuasca & Art of the Amazon

This exhibition considers the impact of the mind-altering, psychotropic vine – ayahuasca – within Western Amazonian social life. It explores how the ritual consumption of ayahuasca is linked to their artistic production.

14 September - 2 February 2025

YOUR LENS, YOUR TRUTH (Shutter Hub x Sainsbury Centre)

Online exhibition: Sometimes seen as superior to text, photographs are now a mainstay of how the media and the public understand events. Is what we see in the image the truth of the subject being photographed?

3 October - 3 January 2025

Ivan Morison: Towards the Weird Heart of Things

The Sainsbury Centre, in collaboration with Orleans House Gallery, presents Towards the Weird Heart of Things, a new site-specific series of sculptures by artist Ivan Morison in response to the curatorial provocation, Why Do We Take Drugs?

21 October - 28 February 2025

Lindsey Mendick: Hot Mess

Celebrated artist Lindsey Mendick has created new ceramic works for the Sainsbury Centre to explore her thoughts on Why Do We Take Drugs?.

23 November - 27 April 2025

Heroin Falls

Heroin Falls unflinchingly reveals heroin dependency as seen through the eyes of two remarkable photographers. The exhibition aims to show how substance use and dependency is a global challenge that transcends race, location and class.

23 November - 27 April 2025