About the Museum
The Sainsbury Centre is a world-class art museum with a unique perspective on how art can foster cultural dialogue and exchange. Following a radical relaunch in 2023 the Sainsbury Centre is the first museum in the world to formally recognise the living lifeforce of art, enabling people to build relationships across an arts landscape. The art of the Sainsbury Centre is able to help reframe and answer the most important questions people have in their lives. It is not a museum to only learn more about artists, cultures or movements like Francis Bacon, the Tang Dynasty or Modernism, it is a place of experience, where collections are animate and visitors are emotionally connected.
One of the first museums in the world to display art from all around the globe and from all time periods equally and collectively, Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury created one of the most sought after yet non-conformist art collections. In 1973 they donated their collection, which transcended traditional barriers between art, architecture, archaeology and anthropology, to the University of East Anglia (UEA), and created an entirely new type of museum. Housed in Sir Norman Foster’s revolutionary first ever public building, the space aimed for an interactive relationship between people, object and landscape, where art was placed within an open yet intimate ‘living area’.
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Read LessCollection Highlights
Amedeo ModiglianiHead of a Woman (Anna Zborowska), 1918
Lucie RieBottle with flared rim, c.1974
Pablo PicassoFemale nude with arms raised, 1907
Portrait of Sainsbury (Robert Sainsbury), 1955
Head of an Oba, Early Africa: Benin, 16th century
