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Please note the Museum is closed from 22 December 2024 to 1 January 2025 inclusive.
Last day open 2024: Saturday 21 December.  First day open 2025: Thursday 2 January
 

Exhibitions
Upcoming exhibitions

The Air Loom, A Human Influencing Machine

From

3 September 2016

To

22 March 2017

Location

Bethlem Museum of the Mind
Bethlem Royal Hospital
Monks Orchard Road
Beckenham
Kent BR3 3BX

Art installation by Rod Dickinson

This artwork is a materialisation of the paranoid delusion of James Tilly Matthews, a Bethlem patient of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Matthews believed that influencing machines were hidden close to the corridors of power and were being operated to devastating effect by a shady gang of French revolutionaries bent on plunging Europe into war. He was also convinced that one of these enormous machines had been placed in or near Bethlem Hospital with malign intent towards him.

Matthews’ careful drawing and precise description of the Air Loom attracted considerable interest in his case both during and after his lifetime. There is a fine modern biography of him by Mike Jay, a trustee of the Museum of the Mind, and a website devoted to Rod Dickinson’s artistic representation of Matthews’ worst fears at www.theairloom.org.

The installation is currently on display in the newly refurbished Bethlem Boardroom located in the museum.

Free entry - all welcome