Name: How Does The World Feel About Vaccines
Location: Wellcome Collection

Join us for a quick cup of coffee and a pastry, afternoon tea, or a light meal with a glass of wine.

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Café

Gallery tour

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Daily Guided Tours and Discussions

Come and browse a selection of our quirky gifts and books.

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Shop

Enjoy delicious lunches, drinks and afternoon tea on level 2.

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Restaurant

Discover the mechanics of magic and the way that trickery works in the Smoke and Mirrors gallery. These live performances explore perception, deception and the ‘supernatural’.

Each performance is repeated twice per day and three times per week. During performances, the gallery may be busier than usual. 

<p>A performance taking place as part of an exhibition, live in the gallery space.</p>

In-Gallery Performance

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Smoke and Mirrors magic show by Will Houstoun

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We’ll be in Gallery 1. When you enter Wellcome Collection, it’s on the left on level 0.    

Gallery 1

Spaces are first come, first served and may run out if we are busy. You may wish to arrive early to claim a space. If you have any access requests or requirements, email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Limited spaces available

Experience magic in the Smoke and Mirrors galleries with live performances exploring perception, deception and the ‘supernatural’.

Smoke and Mirrors Live Performances

Our brains are constantly active, even when we are resting. Hear from cognitive neuroscientist Avital Hahamy who explores the brain at rest, including in people with schizophrenia or autism, and in blind people experiencing visual hallucinations, to better understand neural activity in everyday life.

Please note that this event is taking place in the Reading Room, so food and drink will need to be enjoyed elsewhere before or after the event.

Avital Hahamy is a cognitive neuroscientist based at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at UCL.

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Avital Hahamy

Speaker

Discussion

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Packed Lunch discussion in the Forum

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We’ll be in the Reading Room on level 2. You can walk up the spiral staircase to the Reading Room door, or take the lift up and then head left from the Library Desk.

Reading Room

Join cognitive neuroscientist Avital Hahamy to learn about neural activity in everyday life and what our brains do when resting.

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Packed Lunch event in the Forum

At every Packed Lunch, you’ll get an opportunity to hear from a local scientist in conversation with a Wellcome facilitator about their current research. We then invite you to ask your own questions and share your thoughts. Sit back and listen or contribute – it’s up to you.

Packed Lunch

The Brain at Rest

Join Visitor Experience Assistant Sarah Bentley for an audio-described tour exploring how magic works on – and in – your mind. You’ll learn about the mediums who conjured spirits and the psychologists who tried to expose them, the magicians and ‘glamorous assistants’ skilled in misdirection, and the mentalists who use their trickery on our unreliable brains. 

Sarah is trained in audio-description by VocalEyes and has designed her tour for visitors who are blind or partially sighted.

Sarah is a Visitor Experience Assistant and guide. In the pursuit of her tour research for Wellcome Collection she has trained in shiatsu, a form of massage derived from Chinese medicine, learned a lost slang called Polari, tried an ancient Greek sleep cure and built a replica spirit-rapping hand.

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Sarah Bentley

Host

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Visitor Experience Assistant tour at Wellcome Collection

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This event will be audio described for visitors who are blind or partially sighted. Places are free but very limited. If you would like to come along, email access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

This event is audio described for visitors who are blind or partially sighted. For any assistance, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Audio described

We’ll meet at the Information Point, which is on level 0, directly in front of you as you enter Wellcome Collection.

Information Point

Join Visitor Experience Assistant Sarah Bentley for an audio-described tour exploring how magic works on – and in – your mind.

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We regularly run tours of our exhibitions for visitors with access needs: British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted, audio described (AD) and speech-to-text (STT) tours.

Access Tours and Discussions

AD Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Hear about Asylum, “the magazine for democratic psychiatry”, and consider its historical context as well as its research significance and potential from a range of perspectives. In particular, this event will explore survivor voices, action and critique, and their importance to studies of the recent history of mental health provision in the UK. Following presentations from our speakers, there will be an opportunity to discuss their ideas.

Helen Spandler is Professor of Mental Health Studies at the University of Central Lancashire and recently held a Wellcome Research bursary to explore the back catalogue of Asylum, the radical mental health magazine. 

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Helen Spandler

Researcher

Anne Plumb is a grassroots survivor historian and member of the Survivors History Group. She has her own personal archive called ‘Ear to the Ground. Survivor and ally voices: organisation and action'.

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Anne Plumb

Tony Baldwinson is a project manager and a non-disabled volunteer at the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, involved in the GMCDP Archive since the early 2000s and interested in radical mental health practices.

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Tony Baldwinson

Seminar

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Viewing Room event

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We’ll be in the Viewing Room. It’s next to the Library entrance on level 2, which you can reach by taking the lift or the stairs.

Viewing Room

Signing up for a free event does not guarantee a place on the day. Doors usually open 15 minutes before an event starts and we advise arriving before the scheduled start time to claim your place.

We hold some spaces for people with access requirements. To request one, please email access@wellcomecollection.org.

First come, first served

Hear about Asylum, “the magazine for democratic psychiatry”, and consider its historical context and research significance and potential from a range of perspectives.

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Researcher talk in the Viewing Room

Hear about some of the latest projects that explore materials from our collections, ask questions and take inspiration for your own research.

Exploring Research

Voices of Democratic Psychiatry

Listen in on a recording of a BBC World Service programme to hear about the findings of a major new global survey investigating attitudes to vaccines. The Wellcome Global Monitor asked people around the world whether they think vaccines are safe, effective and important for children to have. 

This programme is part of ‘The Evidence’, a series exploring the challenges our world face today. ‘The Evidence’ will be broadcast on the BBC World Service. 

The BBC World Service is the world’s largest international broadcaster. It broadcasts radio and television news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world.

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BBC World Service

Collaborator

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Radio event in the Reading Room

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Booking a ticket for a free event does not guarantee a place on the day. Doors usually open 15 minutes before an event starts and we advise arriving before the scheduled start time to claim your place.

First come, first seated

Come and listen in to the recording of a BBC World Service radio programme exploring attitudes towards vaccines.

How Does The World Feel About Vaccines

What can magic and conjuring tell us about the human mind? Our new exhibition brings together the worlds of psychology and entertainment in search of the truth about deception.

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 may be busy during these performances. 

Exhibition highlights

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Smoke and Mirrors exhibition - Houdini's Water-Filled-Torture poster, Museums Sheffield

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Free exhibition in central London bringing together the worlds of psychology and entertainment. Features Harry Houdini's ‘Bell Box’, Paul Daniels’s recreation of P T Selbit’s sawing-in-half box, the head of Derren Brown's gorilla costume, and much more.

Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic

Free magic and psychology exhibition in central London, open 11 April to 15 September 2019.

The Medicine Man exhibition was awesome – so much to see.

Sir Henry Wellcome was an enthusiastic traveller and collector – amassing well over a million books, paintings and objects from around the world. Most of his collecting was in the two areas that fascinated him the most – health and medicine. ‘Medicine Man’ is our free permanent display of a small part of that huge collection.

Here, you can find out how people have viewed the basics of life over the centuries – birth, health, sex and death.

Explore a wide range of objects that includes a set of Japanese sex aids from the 1930s, a unique collection of votive offerings and some diagnostic dolls used by women in 18th century China to show male doctors where they were feeling pain. We also have a metal executioner’s mask from Portugal.

There are also some direct connections to major historical figures. The exhibition features Napoleon’s toothbrush, Nelson’s razor, Charles Darwin’s walking stick, Florence Nightingale’s moccasins and even some of King George III’s hair. 

While you're here, join one of our regular tours or pick up a free digital guide, available in English, French and British Sign Language.

He also created  one of the world's great museums: a vast stockpile of evidence about our  universal interest in health and the body.

More than 150 years after his birth in 1853, this exhibition reunites  a cross-section of extraordinary objects from his collection, ranging  from diagnostic dolls to Japanese sex aids, and from Napoleon's  toothbrush to George III's hair. It also provides a very different  perspective on some of our own obsessions with medicine and health.

In 'Medicine Man' some objects are gathered  by type and others by broad cross-cultural themes. Seven other objects  are presented individually and are examined by a variety of commentators  from different backgrounds, to show that one object can mean many  different things and tell many different stories.

Borrow a free digital guide and learn about Henry Wellcome's wonderful curios (available in English, French and BSL).

Some non-flash photography is permitted in this exhibition. See our photography policy.

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Medicine Man exhibition

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Permanent

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Henry Wellcome was a man of many parts: entrepreneur, philanthropist, patron of science and pioneer of aerial photography. 

We’ll be in the ‘Medicine Man’ gallery. You can find it by taking the stairs or the lift to level 1.

Medicine Man gallery

Medicine Man

This free permanent exhibition in central London reunites a cross-section of extraordinary objects about science, medicine, health and the body from Henry Wellcome's collection.

Opening in May 2019, our free exhibition will bring together two artists who explore the representation of chronic illness and reclaim the idea of ‘misbehaving bodies’.

Influential photographer Jo Spence’s (1934–92) work documents her diagnosis of breast cancer and subsequent healthcare regime throughout the 1980s. Her raw and confrontational photography will be shown alongside Oreet Ashery’s (b. 1966) award-winning miniseries ‘Revisiting Genesis’, 2016. Ashery's politically-engaged work explores loss and the lived experience of chronic illness in the digital era. In October 2019, a new commission by Ashery exploring the recent death of her father will be added. 

In this exhibition, challenge your understanding of ‘misbehaving’ or ‘untypical’ bodies, and reflect on how illness can disrupt and shape the way you think about the body, family and identity. 

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Jo Spence enacting her hospital experience. 1982-86. Collaboration with Rosy Martin. Wellcome Collection

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Free exhibition in central London opening May 2019 featuring the influential photography of Jo Spence and artwork of  Oreet Ashery. Features Spence's renowned self-portraits in the series 'The Picture of Health?' 1982-86 and Ashery's 'Revisiting Genesis'.

We’ll be in Gallery 2. To get there, go up the stairs or take the lift to level 1.

Gallery 2

Misbehaving Bodies

Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery

Free central London exhibition featuring the photography of Jo Spence and the moving image and performance artwork from Oreet Ashery. Opens 30 May 2019.

Drop in to find inspiration and indulge your curiosity. It’s a gallery, a social space, and a place to unwind.

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What's on

Exhibitions

Events

2019-05

2019-06

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What's on

Exhibitions

Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic

Medicine Man

Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery

Events

2019-05

Smoke and Mirrors Live Performances

The Brain at Rest

AD Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Voices of Democratic Psychiatry

Daily Guided Tours and Discussions

2019-06

How Does The World Feel About Vaccines

Daily Guided Tours and Discussions

Try these too

Reading Room

Shop

Café

Restaurant

Stay connected with email updates from Wellcome Collection

Wellcome collectionWellcome Collection

Finding us:

Opening times:

Today's opening times

Wellcome collection