Art and Spirit
The College of Psychic Studies, London | August 11 – 20, 2019
The College of Psychic Studies in London will hold another exhibition of mediumistic art under the title Art and Spirit: Visions of Wonder. The show will include spirit inspired art, as well as artefacts and photographs from the archives of the College. It will be the most comprehensive exhibition in the College’s 135 year history.
Amongst the exhibits are artworks by the Victorian pioneers of spirit art, including Anna Mary Howitt Watts and Georgiana Houghton, but also works by Madge Gill and Ethel Le Rossignol.
A separate room is dedicated to female artists associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The exhibition also includes works of art created in the dark séance rooms of the 19th century, many spirit photographs and photographic documents of apparitions of so-called ectoplasm.
Among the various special exhibitions objects is a scrying mirror from the 1920s, originally owned by Helen Duncan, a famous Scottish medium, and the "magic" table presented as evidence in 1876 by magician John Nevil Maskelyne in the Bow Magistrates Court case of spiritualist Henry Slade.
The College of Psychic Studies is located in a Victorian townhouse in South Kensington, London. The most famous former president is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, spiritualist and creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. He wrote his history of spiritualism in 1926 with the help of the College's library, which has an extensive collection of esoteric books.
