20/05/2026
📢 We have news! 📢 We are thrilled to announce that the Sainsbury Centre has received a major donation from the Gatsby Foundation to revitalise our very special building!
This marks one of the largest ever donations made to a UK museum and will enhance our wonderful grade II* listed architectural icon in Norwich as we approach our 50th anniversary.
This exciting project will allow us to make significant enhancements to the sustainability of the building through environmental technology, creating a greener Sainsbury Centre for the future. Innovative photovoltaic panels will be incorporated into our roof, allowing renewable energy to be generated on site, in addition to much more.
The space will also be revitalised for present and future generations of visitors. We will introduce renewed entrances, lifts, signage and flooring, while solar controlled blinds will bring more natural light into the gallery spaces. We will also upgrade the bathrooms, restaurants, kitchen, spaces for staff and more.
The Financial Times writes: "In 1973, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury founded the museum as part of the young university, which captured the liberating social changes of the 1960s." Fast forward to 2023, when Executive Director Jago Cooper "came up with the idea of “living art”, namely that the objects themselves are sentient beings. It sounds bonkers, or at least highly conceptual, but is very effective and tangible."
Photos by Fosters and Partners, The Norman Foster Foundation, Neil Hall, Donovan Jones, Andy Crouch and Kate Wolstenholme. Copyright Fosters and Partners, The Norman Foster Foundation, and Sainsbury Centre.
Read the full story now at https://sainsburycentre.ac.uk/our-future
