London Art Fair
Please note that this exhibition has now closed. It took place from 22 to 26 January 2025.
London Art Fair returned from 22-26 January 2025, highlighting a selection of the best galleries from the UK and beyond. Sainsbury Centre, the first museum to treat art as a living entity, was featured as London Art Fair’s annual Museum Partner.
At London Art Fair, the Sainsbury Centre presented the critically acclaimed Living Art experience, encouraging visitors to step inside an exhibition case and become an artwork themselves. This is an example of how the museum animates visitors to encounter the works not as inanimate objects, but as they would another person, prompting a reconsideration of their relationship with art. Observed by iconic pieces from the Sainsbury collection, created by artists including Francis Bacon, Elisabeth Frink, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Yinka Shonibare, this inversion of the traditional viewer-artwork relationship seeks to reveal the profound connection that can emerge between individuals and art, offering a path to self-discovery. Visitors are also invited to hold their phones up to artworks using the Smartify app to hear about their life stories. Art truly comes to life at the Sainsbury Centre’s display.
“We are delighted to be collaborating with London Art Fair in 2025. We hope visitors to the fair will enjoy discovering how our incredible art museum is developing new ways to connect people with our world class collection. The Sainsbury Centre was founded with the radical idea of removing the barriers that exist between art and people and believes in the ability of museums to activate social change. Our museum has created some innovative ways of bringing that raw power of art to life, and visitors to the fair will be able to try out these new Living Art ideas themselves, not least as they step inside the exhibition case and see the art looking at them.”
Jago Cooper, Director of the Sainsbury Centre
All images: Sainsbury Centre at London Art Fair 2025. Photography by Kate Wolstenholme.
