Collaborating with a fragrance company, the Sainsbury Centre has developed a scent designed to calm and induce a mood of peace. You can sample it in a “multi-sensory reflective space” created to display a Monet landscape lent by the National Gallery, one part of a constellation of exhibitions and events centred around the question: Can We Stop Killing Each Other? But by this point the only question I was asking is, why did I fall for it and make the trip to this glass house on the University of East Anglia campus?
Jago Cooper, its director, is full of bright ideas. He’s set out to inject energy into the home of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection with such wheezes as declaring all its artworks to be “alive” – and staging shows around Big Questions of Our Time. Maybe this particular question is too big, but I think if it had been broken down and some logical clarity applied there might have been something to say – instead of saying nothing, which is what this windy absence does.
