Living by the Rule: Contemporary meets Medieval
Exploring the idea of routine and regulation, this exhibition reflected on the ‘rules’ that we live by today, through a dialogue between medieval experiments in a different way to live and modern reflections upon how life is organised.
Play Power
Exploring the concept of play in human cultures, Play Power reflected on the broader significance of play and how this is integrated into our daily lives. Would we live a more meaningful life if play were a central focus of day-to-day living?
Can We Stop Killing Each Other?
This season wrestled with one of the darkest and deadliest aspects of humanity, exploring the fundamental questions of why humans are led to kill and the culture that wrestles with this notion.
Seeds of Hate and Hope
This exhibition highlighted personal artistic responses to global atrocities, such as genocides, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity, challenging the typical representations of war and ‘trauma porn’ often dispelled through the media.
Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa
Following a residency with the Sainsbury Centre, internationally acclaimed Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa unveiled a series of new paintings reflecting on the refugee crisis, which were created in dialogue with the museum’s collection.
Tiaki Ora ∞ Protecting Life: Anton Forde
Anton Forde’s monumental installation of 81 over-life-size figures, Papare Eighty.one (2024) with Shiree Reihana, was shown in the UK for the first time in a new site-specific configuration.
Darwin in Paradise Camp: Yuki Kihara
The UK premiere of 'Paradise Camp', a celebrated work by Yuki Kihara, an interdisciplinary artist of Sāmoan and Japanese descent.
Sea Inside
Sea Inside turned our oceanic gaze towards the sea’s more intimate spaces – whether physical, psychological or imaginary – and dived into shared watery origins, Indigenous ways of life and the items we remove from the sea to display on land.
A World of Water
What would the world be like without water? This exhibition aimed to unlock a sense of urgency, recognising that water, and possible geopolitical conflicts caused by it, will be as significant in this century as oil was in the 20th.
The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Reflections on Peace
The Sainsbury Centre has been selected as a partner for The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour 2025–27. The work selected for the first year was Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872).
Can the Seas Survive Us?
Multiple exhibitions explored Can the Seas Survive Us?, examined the choices shaping our future due to climate change, while emphasising the vital importance of the oceans and the life beneath the waves for the viability of our shared future.
Eyewitness
Why are people across the world so fascinated by the dramatisation of killing? Eyewitness considered how violent stage and screen narratives can invite questions about our own morality, cultural codes and religious beliefs.
Lindsey Mendick: Hot Mess
Celebrated artist Lindsey Mendick created new ceramic works for the Sainsbury Centre to explore her thoughts on Why Do We Take Drugs?, subverting the tradition, tackling social taboos and exposing the artist’s secret fears.
Heroin Falls
Heroin Falls unflinchingly revealed heroin dependency as seen through the eyes of two remarkable photographers. The exhibition aimed to show how substance use and dependency is a global challenge that transcends race, location and class.
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?
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. This show referenced 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.
Ayahuasca & Art of the Amazon
This exhibition considered the impact of the mind-altering, psychotropic vine – ayahuasca – within Western Amazonian social life. It explored how the ritual consumption of ayahuasca is linked to their artistic production.
London Art Fair
London Art Fair returned to the UK capital from 22-26 January 2025. Sainsbury Centre, the first museum to treat art as a living entity, featured as London Art Fair’s annual Museum Partner.
Why Do We Take Drugs?
From alcohol and caffeine to ayahuasca and heroin, this season used art to take visitors on a journey of investigation, inviting audiences to explore the world of global drug cultures from illegal to familiar across one mind-blowing museum landscape.
Lower Galleries: Tank Man and The Heart of Truth
Two displays in our Lower Galleries. As part of The Camera Never Lies, Tank Man presented photographs and archival video footage from the events in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. The Heart of Truth explored religious teachings of truthfulness within Shinto and Buddhism.
The Camera Never Lies: Challenging images through The Incite Project
This dynamic exhibition re-evaluated the most iconic images of the past 100 years, exploring the impact and influence photography has had on shaping – and in some cases distorting – the narrative of major global events.
Jeffrey Gibson: no simple word for time
In his first solo exhibition at a UK museum, American artist Jeffrey Gibson (b.1972) created a new site-specific installation for the Sainsbury Centre.
Liquid Gender
In an exploration of the relationship between gender expression and identity, with a focus on pre-colonial traditions, the Sainsbury Centre presented works by a myriad of internationally acclaimed artists, including new work, UK premieres, and new acquisitions.
In Event of Moon Disaster
An Emmy Award-winning interactive experience that was a deep dive into misinformation and conspiracy. Using AI to tell an alternative history, the show brought to light how an event as influential as the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing could be manipulated, and how doubt could be cast on even the most well-known of facts.
What is Truth?
In 2024, the Sainsbury Centre investigated how we can know what is true in the world around us through a series of fascinating, interlinked exhibitions – In Event of Moon Disaster, Liquid Gender, Jeffrey Gibson: no simple word for time and The Camera Never Lies – bringing together some of the world’s leading artists and creative thinkers, plus a new, interlinking publication.
Sediment Spirit: The Activation of Art in the Anthropocene
Curated by John Kenneth Paranada, the first Curator of Art and Climate Change at a UK museum, this exhibition brought together local and international artworks from the 1960s to the present day that respond to the climate crisis in all its complexities.
The Stuff of Life | The Life of Stuff
In this major international exhibition, visitors met artworks composed of salvaged materials, resynthesised fragments, and e-waste that demonstrate the ingenuity of human creativity to re-imagine our relationships with the planet and inspire people to positively engage with our shared future.
Planet for our Future: How do we adapt to a transforming world?
Our new approach to exhibition programming, empowering art to address fundamental societal challenges through themed seasons, kicked off in Autumn 2023 with Planet for our Future. This asked one fundamental question that confronts us all: How do we adapt to a transforming world?
Empowering Art: Indigenous Creativity and Activism from North America’s Northwest Coast
Empowering Art was a ground-breaking exhibition of rich but rarely seen artworks, bringing together exceptional contemporary and historical pieces from across the Northwest Coast of North America.
Julian Stair: Art, Death and the Afterlife
Leading ceramic artist, Julian Stair OBE, presented new works created in response to the global pandemic, offering commemoration and solace for those who have died and lost loved ones.
Summer Brochure 2026
Brochure (PDF)