Projects

Room to Breathe

April 2, 2022  -  April 6, 2025

Free Admission

Edward Hartley Mooney, Still Life, 1918

Mindfulness and the art of getting away from it all

The noise and overstimulation of the modern world gets too much for many of us.

Room to Breathe is a dedicated space to help you experience art in a more mindful way.

You can see a variety of works from our collection and listen to original audio guides to help you to explore the art using mindful techniques.

Furniture, colour scheme, number and height of art works, text and audio meditations have all been carefully chosen in a way that we hope will encourage deeper engagement with art and reduce stress.

This a room for you. To rest. To recover. A room to breathe…

#MAGwellbeing

Room to Breathe installation shot- two people sat on a sofa from behind looking at an abstract painting

Looking at the way we look

22 November: 10am – 2pm
23 November: 11.30 – 4.30pm
24 November: 1 – 4.30pm
25-26 November: 10.30am – 4pm

Join us for a series of exclusive guided viewing experiences of our mindful space, Room to Breathe, while wearing state-of-the-art eye tracking glasses. We’ve been developing work around art and deeper engagement for nearly a decade, and now we want to take this exploration one step further.

In conjunction with the ongoing research projects conducted in our wellbeing space, Room to Breathe, the gallery is teaming up with psychologists from Goldsmiths, University of London and KU Leuven (Belgium) to offer museum visitors a never-before-seen viewing experience.

a woman sat down looking at a painting wearing headphones and eye tracking glasses

This research asks the question – What do we look at when we’re looking at art?

The 30-minute experience will give visitors the opportunity to understand how they visually explore a painting. During this event, each visitor will be fitted with a pair of eye-tracking glasses that will record in real-time where they are looking and what they are looking at. At the end of the session, everyone will report on their experience through several questionnaires and open-ended discussion with Gallery and Goldsmiths staff. Participation in this event is voluntary and will be compensated with a café voucher.

No need for tickets, just show up at the gallery, ask for the Room to Breathe experience, and we will fit you in.

*Please note, galleries 14 & 15 will be closed to the general public during this time.

You can download label guides and audio transcripts for the artworks here