Museums - Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

Begun from the world art collection of Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts first opened at the University of East Anglia in 1978. The original museum building and its additional Crescent Wing were designed by Norman Foster, who also oversaw a major refurbishment and expansion of the museum, completed in 2006. Today the museum contains the Sainsbury Collection and Library, temporary exhibition galleries, the School of World Art Studies and Museology, and the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas.
When the Sainsburys donated their collection to the university in 1973, it consisted of around 300 works, and by the time of the Centre's opening it had grown to 600. Today the collection contains over 1,700 objects, representing cultures from Europe; West, Central, and East Africa; North America; Polynesia, Melanesia, and Australia; Indonesia; Egypt; Central and South America; and virtually every region of Asia.