The Sainsbury Centre’s radical exhibition programme seeks to answer the most important questions in our lives.
The latest, Can We Stop Killing Each Other?, explores the fundamental question of why humans are led to kill, and how art, film, TV and culture have grappled with, or even aggravated, our proximity to violence. According to the Global Peace Index 2024, 100 countries have been "at least partially involved in some form of external conflict in the past five years, up from 59 in 2008." Can We Stop Killing Each Other? asks if creative thinkers, and the art they produce, can use human empathy to create change.
The season of five exhibitions includes a monumental installation by Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Anton Forde (Taranaki Māori, Gaelic, Geltacht, English) and a series of new paintings reflecting on the refugee crisis by Tesfaye Urgessa; as well as presentations of historical artworks such as Claude Monet’s The Petit Bras of the Seine at Argenteuil (1872) and an exhibition spanning Shakespearean tragedy to Hitchcockian spectacle, which asks how violent stage and screen narratives can invite questions about our own morality, cultural codes and religious beliefs.
The season is accompanied by a book, published by Kulturalis in September 2025, which features new texts by British historian and academic Joanna Bourke and Michael Steedman, deputy pro vice-chancellor Māori | Kaiarataki at the University of Auckland.
Featured exhibitions:
- Tiaki Ora ∞ Protecting Life: Anton Forde, 2 August 2025 – 19 April 2026
- Eyewitness, 20 September 2025 – 15 February 2026
- Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa, 20 September 2025 – 15 February 2026
- The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Reflections on Peace, 20 September 2025 – 11 January 2026
- Seeds of Hate and Hope, 28 November 2025 – 17 May 2026
Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Jago Cooper, said: “This series of exhibitions brings together some of the most inspiring artists and powerful artworks of the last few hundred years. The emotional power of art can help people empathise with the personal understanding of this most terrifying aspect of human behaviour. It is this emotional connection and what it reveals of humanity that goes to the heart of what it means to be human.
The raw power of the artistic responses on display can hopefully help us find the answers we so desperately seek. In a world so fraught with violence, society needs a safe space to reflect on this fundamental question.”
Further Information: Sainsbury Centre | Art Gallery & Museum | Events & Exhibitions