What can magic and conjuring tell us about the human mind? Our exhibition brings together the worlds of psychology and entertainment in search of the truth about deception.
Smoke and Mirrors exhibition - Houdini's Water-Filled-Torture poster, Museums Sheffield, Thomas SG Farnetti. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
You won’t believe your eyes.
Explore how our biases affect our perception and whether our senses can be hacked. Discover spirit photography, magic props and psychology experiments to see how magic works on – and in – the mind of the spectator.
Artefacts on display from the world of magic include the head of the gorilla costume worn by Derren Brown, Harry Houdini’s ‘Bell Box’, Tommy Cooper’s fez, and Paul Daniels’s sawing-in-half box.
Six times per week you can enjoy performances in the gallery explaining the psychology behind the magic. The gallery will be busy during these performances.
Exhibition highlights
Paul Daniels' cabinet for sawing a person in half. © British Magic Museum. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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A magician sawing through his female assistant is one of the most iconic magic tricks of all time. Clever misdirection has us focusing on the magician while the assistant, who appears passive, is in fact using incredible skill to perform the illusion.
Ghost detection kit. © Images reproduced by courtesy of Senate House Library, University of London.
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This toolkit belonged to Eric Dingwall, who travelled the world investigating mediums for the Society of Psychical Research. He had equipment such as luminous pins, a compass and a weighing measure.
The Davenport Brothers' Public Cabinet Séance. © Victoria and Albert Museum.
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In the Davenport brothers’ popular ‘Public Cabinet Séance’, the two brothers claimed to show the power of spirits by being bound by the hands and feet and shut inside a cabinet. The audience would then hear musical instruments playing and see objects mysteriously flying out from an empty compartment before the doors opened to reveal that the brothers were still tied up.
Margery Crandon's wax fingerprint impression. © Cambridge University Library and the Society for Psychical Research.
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Margery Crandon was a spiritualist who claimed to channel her dead brother, Walter. Walter began to leave fingerprints in wax during Crandon’s seances, which led to her being discredited when a thumbprint was found to belong to her dentist.
Dunninger poster. © The Magic Circle. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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Mentalist Joseph Dunninger brought mind reading to a mainstream audience and was keen to reveal the ‘natural’ trickery behind ‘spooky’ acts. On his radio show, he intoned to his audience, “You must want me to get into your thoughts before I can – do you want me in there?”
The cigarette trick, from The Best of Slydini. © D. Robbins & Co., Inc., the House of E–Z Magic, USA ⁄ Brigida Caramagna.
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Just as the Muybridge photographs helped people to understand the gallop of a horse, these photographs of sleight-of-hand magician Tony Slydini reveal the clever movements that create misdirection in magic tricks.
Telepatha cards. © Cambridge University Library and the Society for Psychical Research.
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If you’ve ever wondered if you might have extrasensory perception, these cards developed in 1939 by psychical researcher Harry Price provide a way to test your skills – one person shuffles and selects a card to think about, and another tries to sense which card they’ve chosen.
Egyptian Hall poster. © The British Library Board.
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Magicians Maskelyne and Cooke had a remarkable run at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, where they performed for 31 years – the Hall even became known as “England’s Home of Mystery”, as it was used for staging illusions and exposing spiritualist frauds.
Alexander: The Man Who Knows. © Reproduced Courtesy Paul Kieve Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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Alexander, “The Man Who Knows”, used a turban to serve two purposes: he used it to create a persona based on stereotypes of Eastern mystics, and also to disguise a device that used to secretly communicate with his hidden offstage assistant.
Head from the gorilla costume worn by Derren Brown. © British Magic Museum. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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This gorilla costume was worn by Derren Brown in his show ‘Mind Reader: An Evening of Wonders’. It is a nod to the power of misdirection and the selective attention test: 50 per cent of participants in this experiment missed the gorilla walking across the screen because their attention was elsewhere.
Carter the Great poster. © Reproduced Courtesy Paul Kieve Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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Carter the Great was just one of the many performers to do a ‘spirit cabinet’ act, as depicted in this poster. The large equipment that Carter required for his show, like the cabinet, may have saved his life: he was told there was no room for him to return from Europe to the USA aboard the Titanic.