“It’s a very subtle museum,” says Paul Greenhalgh, the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. “The height of it is quite low and from everywhere in the building you can see the whole structure.”
Greenhalgh, who has been at the museum for eight years, has been busy planning events to celebrate its 40th birthday. The Sainsbury Centre opened in 1978 and was the first public building designed by the world-renowned architect Norman Foster. A year earlier, Richard Rogers’ Centre Georges Pompidou opened in Paris.
Both of these revolutionary museum buildings feature in the exhibition Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960-1990. Opening at the Sainsbury Centre on 24 March, the show will present a history of modern British architecture through photography, drawings and architects’ models.
“At some level I’d say the Sainsbury Centre functions as a national museum in the regions,” says Greenhalgh, who’s put a lot of time, effort and funding into boosting the exhibition programme over the past five years. “Norfolk County Council runs wonderful museums, but we’re not them. We’re Star Trek. We parachuted in.”
The original Foster building comprises a central space that houses the museum’s diverse art collection. Greenhalgh says that when he arrived – replacing Nichola Johnson as the director – the venue needed some loving care. Not only had the restaurant been closed and turned into storage, the upstairs exhibition space had become very sad. “It was virtually unvisited – a dead space,” he says.
Greenhalgh, a specialist in the history of ceramics, has turned the place around by reopening a cafe-restaurant where Foster intended it, creating a shop, and focusing on developing a strong exhibition programme.
Open for business
“In the last five years we’ve developed new temporary exhibition galleries downstairs,” Greenhalgh says. “We knocked out storage and offices and created these big spaces, which are hidden underground so they don’t detract from Norman’s big vision.”
The new spaces launched in September 2013 with the most ambitious exhibition in the centre’s then-35-year history, Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia, which celebrated the rich culture and artistic heritage of the region. “My idea for that really came from being somebody who’s a foreigner to this area,” says Greenhalgh, who hails from Bolton, but had just returned from a job as the director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
“When I got to Norwich, I realised it’s one of the densest and richest regions for art – very ancient peoples lived here, there were pre-homo sapien settlements then Roman, then Viking. It’s always been occupied.”
Greenhalgh is delighted that ticketed visitor numbers have more or less quadrupled during the past five years, rising from around 25,000 to nearly 100,000.
He says the essence of this transformation was very much inspired by his time as the head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.
“The idea is that if you do grand temporary exhibitions, while the flavour in the heart of the building stays the same, people are tempted in,” says Greenhalgh, who helped develop the V&A’s exhibition programme during his time there.
The research department was new when Greenhalgh arrived. “The V&A was configured around materials. It was almost like Game of Thrones, with a lord of ceramics, a lord of metal, prints, paper. It made it difficult for the V&A to study periods and ideas.”
A new model was introduced that funnelled good ideas through the research department, he says, rather than just letting them sit in the curator’s department. “The research department became a bit like the museum’s thinktank,” Greenhalgh says.
He led the V&A’s Art Nouveau 1890-1914 exhibition in 2000, which broke the museum’s attendance record. It also paved the way for today’s accessible and popular exhibition programme. “My view is that if you really want your public to see 18th-century furniture the best thing you can do to attract them is put on a Pink Floyd show.”
The Sainsbury Centre is in a challenging location on the outskirts of Norwich though – so what is Greenhalgh doing to ensure that the visitors keep on coming?
His big plan is to create a sculpture park. “UEA is probably the single most beautiful university campus in the UK,” says Greenhalgh. “It has a massive 350 acres of unspoiled land, and that land happens to be right next to the Sainsbury Centre. It’s perfect for a sculpture park.”
Natural habitat
The museum wants to work with the university’s environmental science department. “The idea is that the park will be a mixture of art and science,” says Greenhalgh. The Sainsbury Centre’s three large Henry Moore bronzes, installed outside the venue, will be joined by more works in years to come, installed in a range of biodiverse areas on campus looked after by the environmental science department.
Greenhalgh is keen to show artwork from all over the world, as well as having a good representation of British sculpture, with an aim to open the park by 2020. “For me it’s overwhelmingly about making use of this beautiful landscape and bringing people to this campus for a whole day,” he says.
The centre was created when Robert and Lisa Sainsbury donated their art collection to UEA in 1973. The collection contains more than 1,400 items spanning 5,000 years, with artefacts from prehistory through to the late-20th century, including major holdings of art from Oceania, Africa, the Americas and Asia, as well as the ancient Mediterranean classical cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and medieval Europe. But the Sainsburys also collected modernist 20th century European art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Francis Bacon, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti.
The Sainsburys always wanted their world art to be displayed alongside their modern works. The central collection space at the centre does exactly that. But when it opened in 1978 a lot of people still thought that Native American and African objects couldn’t be art – it was seen as anthropology, says Greenhalgh. Presenting these objects as art was a groundbreaking move.
“The building is listed now, and our collection display will never be changed,” says Greenhalgh. “The current Lord Sainsbury, who’s very close to us, is passionate about it staying that way as well.”
Like the Sainsburys’ collecting policy, Greenhalgh has an open-minded approach to displaying art at the Sainsbury Centre.
“Fashion, ceramics, painting, anything that’s made by people has the potential to be art,” he says. “Physical objects are like databases of people’s lives and personalities. What we’re trying to do at the Sainsbury Centre is create an environment so that visitors walk in and see a work of art that speaks to them.”
He has a BA in fine art and art history and an MA in art history. He lectured in art history at the University of Wales in Cardiff, then became a history of art tutor for the Royal College of Art, London.
He became the deputy keeper, ceramics and glass collections, at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1991, before being appointed as its head of research in 1994.
He left in 2000 to be president of NSCAD University, Canada. In 2006, he was appointed the director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington DC. He is a visiting professor at the University of Brighton, and an honorary fellow of the V&A.
Temporary exhibition spaces were added in 2013. The centre is run by 45 full-time staff and about 70 volunteers.
As well as exhibitions, the centre houses the university’s School of Art History and World Art Studies, and the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Oceania, Africa and the Americas.
Greenhalgh, who has been at the museum for eight years, has been busy planning events to celebrate its 40th birthday. The Sainsbury Centre opened in 1978 and was the first public building designed by the world-renowned architect Norman Foster. A year earlier, Richard Rogers’ Centre Georges Pompidou opened in Paris.
Both of these revolutionary museum buildings feature in the exhibition Superstructures: The New Architecture, 1960-1990. Opening at the Sainsbury Centre on 24 March, the show will present a history of modern British architecture through photography, drawings and architects’ models.
“At some level I’d say the Sainsbury Centre functions as a national museum in the regions,” says Greenhalgh, who’s put a lot of time, effort and funding into boosting the exhibition programme over the past five years. “Norfolk County Council runs wonderful museums, but we’re not them. We’re Star Trek. We parachuted in.”
The original Foster building comprises a central space that houses the museum’s diverse art collection. Greenhalgh says that when he arrived – replacing Nichola Johnson as the director – the venue needed some loving care. Not only had the restaurant been closed and turned into storage, the upstairs exhibition space had become very sad. “It was virtually unvisited – a dead space,” he says.
Greenhalgh, a specialist in the history of ceramics, has turned the place around by reopening a cafe-restaurant where Foster intended it, creating a shop, and focusing on developing a strong exhibition programme.
Open for business
“In the last five years we’ve developed new temporary exhibition galleries downstairs,” Greenhalgh says. “We knocked out storage and offices and created these big spaces, which are hidden underground so they don’t detract from Norman’s big vision.”
The new spaces launched in September 2013 with the most ambitious exhibition in the centre’s then-35-year history, Masterpieces: Art and East Anglia, which celebrated the rich culture and artistic heritage of the region. “My idea for that really came from being somebody who’s a foreigner to this area,” says Greenhalgh, who hails from Bolton, but had just returned from a job as the director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
“When I got to Norwich, I realised it’s one of the densest and richest regions for art – very ancient peoples lived here, there were pre-homo sapien settlements then Roman, then Viking. It’s always been occupied.”
Greenhalgh is delighted that ticketed visitor numbers have more or less quadrupled during the past five years, rising from around 25,000 to nearly 100,000.
He says the essence of this transformation was very much inspired by his time as the head of research at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.
“The idea is that if you do grand temporary exhibitions, while the flavour in the heart of the building stays the same, people are tempted in,” says Greenhalgh, who helped develop the V&A’s exhibition programme during his time there.
The research department was new when Greenhalgh arrived. “The V&A was configured around materials. It was almost like Game of Thrones, with a lord of ceramics, a lord of metal, prints, paper. It made it difficult for the V&A to study periods and ideas.”
A new model was introduced that funnelled good ideas through the research department, he says, rather than just letting them sit in the curator’s department. “The research department became a bit like the museum’s thinktank,” Greenhalgh says.
He led the V&A’s Art Nouveau 1890-1914 exhibition in 2000, which broke the museum’s attendance record. It also paved the way for today’s accessible and popular exhibition programme. “My view is that if you really want your public to see 18th-century furniture the best thing you can do to attract them is put on a Pink Floyd show.”
The Sainsbury Centre is in a challenging location on the outskirts of Norwich though – so what is Greenhalgh doing to ensure that the visitors keep on coming?
His big plan is to create a sculpture park. “UEA is probably the single most beautiful university campus in the UK,” says Greenhalgh. “It has a massive 350 acres of unspoiled land, and that land happens to be right next to the Sainsbury Centre. It’s perfect for a sculpture park.”
Natural habitat
The museum wants to work with the university’s environmental science department. “The idea is that the park will be a mixture of art and science,” says Greenhalgh. The Sainsbury Centre’s three large Henry Moore bronzes, installed outside the venue, will be joined by more works in years to come, installed in a range of biodiverse areas on campus looked after by the environmental science department.
Greenhalgh is keen to show artwork from all over the world, as well as having a good representation of British sculpture, with an aim to open the park by 2020. “For me it’s overwhelmingly about making use of this beautiful landscape and bringing people to this campus for a whole day,” he says.
The centre was created when Robert and Lisa Sainsbury donated their art collection to UEA in 1973. The collection contains more than 1,400 items spanning 5,000 years, with artefacts from prehistory through to the late-20th century, including major holdings of art from Oceania, Africa, the Americas and Asia, as well as the ancient Mediterranean classical cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and medieval Europe. But the Sainsburys also collected modernist 20th century European art, including works by Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Francis Bacon, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti.
The Sainsburys always wanted their world art to be displayed alongside their modern works. The central collection space at the centre does exactly that. But when it opened in 1978 a lot of people still thought that Native American and African objects couldn’t be art – it was seen as anthropology, says Greenhalgh. Presenting these objects as art was a groundbreaking move.
“The building is listed now, and our collection display will never be changed,” says Greenhalgh. “The current Lord Sainsbury, who’s very close to us, is passionate about it staying that way as well.”
Like the Sainsburys’ collecting policy, Greenhalgh has an open-minded approach to displaying art at the Sainsbury Centre.
“Fashion, ceramics, painting, anything that’s made by people has the potential to be art,” he says. “Physical objects are like databases of people’s lives and personalities. What we’re trying to do at the Sainsbury Centre is create an environment so that visitors walk in and see a work of art that speaks to them.”
Paul Greenhalgh at a glance
Paul Greenhalgh has been the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, in Norwich, Norfolk, since 2010.He has a BA in fine art and art history and an MA in art history. He lectured in art history at the University of Wales in Cardiff, then became a history of art tutor for the Royal College of Art, London.
He became the deputy keeper, ceramics and glass collections, at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1991, before being appointed as its head of research in 1994.
He left in 2000 to be president of NSCAD University, Canada. In 2006, he was appointed the director and president of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington DC. He is a visiting professor at the University of Brighton, and an honorary fellow of the V&A.
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at a glance
The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts was designed by Norman Foster and opened in 1978 to house the collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury after they gifted their collection of world art to the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Temporary exhibition spaces were added in 2013. The centre is run by 45 full-time staff and about 70 volunteers.
As well as exhibitions, the centre houses the university’s School of Art History and World Art Studies, and the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Oceania, Africa and the Americas.
