Name: AD Tour of Smoke and Mirrors
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

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

<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 Houston

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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

You can claim your place 15 minutes before the start. Spaces are first come, first served and may run out if we are busy. If you have any access requests or requirements, email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Limited spaces available

Smoke and Mirrors Live Performances

Discover stories from the new exhibition ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ as we question why we are willing to be deceived through the spectacle of illusion. Your accessible tour will be led by a guide using speech-to-text technology.

Ezra is a Visitor Experience Assistant and guide at Wellcome Collection. His interests include film, history and poetry.

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Ezra Miles

Guide

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A speech to text tour at Wellcome Collection

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This event will have live speech-to-text transcription for visitors who are deaf, deafened and hard of hearing. If you would like to come along, email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

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.

Speech-to-text

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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

STT Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Join us for a night of spectacle and illusion, wonder and deception, magic and trickery at this evening of performances, talks and workshops inspired by the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ exhibition. 

This is a special late-night event with a bar running throughout, serving magic-themed cocktails. 

Late

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Ada Campe

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This is a large-scale event with several different activities. Check specific sub-events for their locations.

Throughout the building

This is a large-scale event with several different activities, which may include drop-in sessions, scheduled performances, workshops or talks. Check specific activities for details and to see if you need to book a ticket or to just show up. Spaces for drop-in activities are first come, first served and may run out if we are busy. If you have any special requests or requirements, email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Multi-part programme

Join us for a night of spectacle and illusion, wonder and deception, magic and trickery at this evening of performances, talks and workshops inspired by the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ exhibition.

Seeing is Believing

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 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

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

AD Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Walk inside an innovative mobile clinic, and follow its development from the early prototypes to the first complete version. 

Doctors working in remote locations often deliver emergency services from temporary structures – these need to be flexible yet robust, easy to transport and build, and able to adapt to different climates. 

Independent humanitarian charity Doctors of the World were frustrated with the available options, usually tents or shipping containers. They worked with architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and engineers BuroHappold and ChapmanBDSP to produce the Global Clinic, designed to provide effective, adaptable healthcare in emergency situations and remote locations. 

This installation includes Made Well, which explores how flat-pack technology can respond to the needs of refugees.

Doctors of the World are currently fundraising to deploy the clinic in a location where their care is needed.

Installation

Made Well

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The Global Clinic

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Part of Living with Buildings, our health and architecture exhibition in central London. Walk through an innovative mobile clinic designed to provide effective, adaptable healthcare in emergency situations.

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

Gallery 2

Global Clinic

Upstairs on level 1, walk through our innovative mobile clinic, which will provide effective, adaptable healthcare in emergency situations.  Part of our free health and architecture exhibition, ‘Living with Buildings’.

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.

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: The Psychology of Magic

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

Smoke and Mirrors

Consider your relationship to health as contemporary artists respond to major themes in medicine.

This exhibition presents a range of ideas about science and medicine since Henry Wellcome's death in 1936. It reflects the experiences and interests of scientists, doctors and patients.

Within the huge field of medicine this exhibition attempts to focus  on only a few topics: the body, genomes, obesity and living with medical  science. Each is explored through a range of exhibits from science and  everyday life, as well as artistic responses to the issues presented in red art cubes.

The exhibition features work by Luke Jerram, John Isaacs, Ellie Harrison and from The Institute of Plastination.

After 12 years, this exhibition will close in April 2019.  A new permanent exhibition will open in its place in September 2019 and will cover contemporary issues in health, with new objects, artwork and interpretation.  

This exhibition presents a range of ideas about science and medicine since Henry Wellcome's death in 1936. It reflects the experiences and  interests of scientists, doctors and patients.

Within the huge field of medicine this exhibition attempts to focus  on only a few topics: the body, genomes, obesity and living with medical  science. Each is explored through a range of exhibits from science and  everyday life, as well as artistic responses to the issues presented in  red 'art cubes'.

This exhibition is free. See opening hours. Some non-flash photography is permitted in this exhibition. See our photography policy. 

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Medicine Now exhibition

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Permanent

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Consider your relationship to health as contemporary artists respond to major themes in medicine

We’ll be in the ‘Medicine Now’ gallery, which you can find by taking the stairs or the lift to level 1.

Medicine Now gallery

Medicine Now

Free science and medicine exhibition in central London, featuring artworks from Luke Jerram, John Isaacs, Ellie Harrison and more.

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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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, which explores death and dying in the digital era. And 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; The Final Project ['End Picture' Floating], 1991 – 1992. Collaboration with Terry Dennett. 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'.

Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery: Misbehaving Bodies

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

Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery

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

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Exhibitions

Global Clinic

Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic

Medicine Now

Medicine Man

Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery: Misbehaving Bodies

Events

2019-04

Smoke and Mirrors Live Performances

Daily Guided Tours and Discussions

2019-05

Smoke and Mirrors Live Performances

STT Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Seeing is Believing

AD Tour of Smoke and Mirrors

Daily Guided Tours and Discussions

Try these too

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