Spellbound - Magical Thinking Past and Present (360G-Wellcome-208889_Z_17_Z)

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, will hold the first ever large-scale exhibition focusing on the history of magical thinking from 6 September 2018 to 6 January 2019. Through the exhibition and public engagement programme, we aim to provoke fresh discussion about aspects of psychology and mental health that are rarely talked about but highly accessible and relevant on a daily basis. It will include over 200 objects with a visitor target of 30,000 - 50,000. This is the initiative of three historians of magic collaborating on a 3-year Leverhulme project. Advisors on the cognitive processes behind magical thinking are Sir Simon Wessely, Regius Professor of Psychiatry, King’s College London, and Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society, Bristol University. We aim to target harder to reach audiences working with the Ashmolean’s Community Outreach team. Themes to explore include the positive and negative aspects of magical thinking and the impact on the audience’s lives; how magical thinking in the past and present is influenced by history, culture, education, and personal experience. Other themes of relevance to audiences today, are the Placebo effect, the connection between emotions, magical thinking and a healthy or unhealthy state of mind.