‘Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Knowledge’ at Cantor Art Center
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University presents Cunning Folk: Witchcraft, Magic, and Occult Knowledge, an intimate, single-gallery exhibition allowing visitors to closely and thoughtfully explore the intersection of artistic and magical practice in early modern Europe.
Curated by Sara Lent Frier, Burton & Deedee McMurtry Assistant Curator, Prints & Drawings, Cantor Arts Center, this exhibition draws from Stanford’s encyclopedic on-campus art and library collections to showcase prints, paintings, books, and objects of material culture from c.1500–1750, alongside select contemporary counterpoints. Together, these works reveal early modern magic as a broad and varied realm of rarefied knowledge, while illuminating the role of print in shaping how such practices were imagined.
From the late Middle Ages through the Enlightenment, magic encompassed a wide spectrum of philosophies and practices: from the secret texts of learned occult philosophies to the charms and remedies of local healers, as well as the feared figures associated with diabolical witchcraft. Through separate categories shaped by regionally specific concerns and beliefs, these traditions became increasingly entangled in the hands of artists, printers, and writers. As print media expanded, these practices overlapped under the Anglo-Saxon term cunnan, meaning “to know”. This term could signify not only mastery of hidden forces but also the troubling power to deceive and beguile.
Shedding light on the diverse visual vocabulary for magic, the presentation also explores the sociological impact of these images tied to printing. Both affordable and efficient, printing allowed images of magic to become deeply ingrained in public awareness and opinion. Ideology and material culture reinforced one another with magical powers projected onto outsiders to legitimize colonial and orientalist worldviews, while printed literature codified witchcraft as a crime, fueling mass trials and persecutions across Europe and its colonies.
Cunning Folk is organized in four thematic sections tracing how different types of magic were visualized, practiced, and received. Sabbath examines the mythology of diabolic witchcraft, while Spell presents artist engagement with classical sorcerers alongside some of the tools and texts that sustained practiced magic. Stranger and Suspicion consider how anxieties around magical power were projected onto outsiders both inside and beyond Europe.
Featuring diverse, richly detailed early modern prints, the exhibition also includes a seldom-seen magic roll displayed in its entirety, illustrated books that documented and propagated the witch trials, a sound installation featuring early modern “witch ballads,” and everyday objects reflecting lived belief and practices. Works include famous Northern Renaissance witchcraft prints like Albrecht Dürer’sThe Four Witches (1497) and Hans Baldung Grien’s Witches (1510), a German protective textual amulet containing a set of nomina magica (words used in magical rituals), and editions of important illustrated demonological treatises. Contemporary works set alongside the early modern pieces respond to these histories, such as a cabinet by Sunny A. Smith (b. 1972), a Bay Area sculptor whose ancestors were present in Salem during the trials, and a cast body sculpture by Isabelle Albuquerque (b. 1981) from her series Orgy for Ten People in One Body, sitting astride a broom and covered in a patina of ash.
In celebration of the exhibition, the Cantor will host an evening of poetry, song, and incantation on Thursday, October 30, at 6:00 p.m. Live performance will animate secret magical rites and music about early modern magic.
ABOUT THE CANTOR ARTS CENTER
Serving the Stanford campus, the Bay Area community, and visitors from around the world, the Cantor Arts Center provides an outstanding cultural experience for visitors of all ages. Founded when the university opened in 1891, the historic museum was expanded and renamed in 1999 for lead donors Iris and B. Gerald Cantor.
The Cantor’s collection spans 5,000 years and includes more than 40,000 works of art from around the globe. The Cantor is an established resource for teaching and research on campus. Free admission, tours, lectures, and family activities make the Cantor one of the most visited university art museums in the country.
