The exhibit contains rare manuscripts, photographs and historical movie posters and is the largest collection of witchcraft objects in North America. Most of the objects in the exhibit are from the 1800s, but many of the artifacts date from as early as the 1400s, the Cornell Daily Sun reported.
The purpose of the exhibition, according to Kornelia Tancheva, is to reveal what witch-hunting originally meant, and how it has evolved in popular culture.
"There are a lot of accusations of witch-hunting in our present time, and it's really interesting to see how anybody who feels that they are wrongfully persecuted for political, social, religious or whatever reasons, employs the trope of witch-hunting," she offered.
Co-curator Anne Kenney suggested that the persecution of witches uncovers a theme of scapegoating that is still very much in existence.
"When you want to blame others for things, you blame it on something that is beyond your control, and [when] the powerful become the victims [it] is a very interesting twist," she observed.
The collection was begun by A.D. White, one of the founders of Cornell University, who accumulated books and manuscripts.
"It's not just a single, finished collection of material, it's something that's very much alive and we continue to add to it," said Anne Sauer, director of the university's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
"This is the best witchcraft collection in the country," Tancheva added.
It took Tancheva and Kenney six months to assemble the exhibition.
"What I did was literally go through every single piece and do a lot of research on the pieces because most of the movies, as you can see, are not something that we are necessarily familiar with in our present time," Tancheva said.
Kenney's favorite part of the exhibition was learning about the women who were tried for witchcraft.
"They were seen as possessing so much power, but they were really powerless," she said.
Many students have visited the exhibit and, according to undergraduate Ellen Haines, the exhibit "fit wonderfully with the Halloween spirit."
University student Emma Stillings said, "I feel like I'm just so used to women getting the short end of the stick that it's like, ‘Oh cool, didn't believe us then, don't believe us now."
