For its next trick, Indiana University’s Lilly Library will bring a massive collection of magic and illusion to Bloomington.
Magic performer and writer David Ben sold his collection of thousands of artifacts, books and ephemera dating to the 19th Century. Those materials will be available to scholars, students and the public after cataloging.
“There's an old expression that someone is a 10-year overnight sensation — it looks like they just arrived at stardom,” Ben said. “I'd like to think it's probably going to take 10 years for all of this to germinate before you really see unbelievable breakthroughs, where people will say, ‘Oh, I didn't know the Lilly had this.’ It's going to be this 10-year overnight sensation.”
Ben has been building the collection throughout his decades-long career as a performer, writer and researcher.
“When I was younger, all my friends were octogenarians,” Ben said. “They were great magicians who were in their 70s and 80s, and I was in my teens, in my 20s. And I ended up with a lot of their collections.”
It just so happened that those friends were pioneers in the field of magic, Ben said. The collection includes materials on iconic performers such as Dai Vernon and Harry Houdini, Ben said.
It wasn’t until a cancer diagnosis that Ben considered a longer-term sanctuary for the collection.
After Ben learned that Lilly already held another collection from magician Ricky Jay, he brought the idea to the library.
“My mentor, Ross Bertram, used to say, we're all given the same amount of time, and that's a lifetime, and it's what you do within that lifetime,” Ben said. “So I thought, I need to find a home for this material.”
Lilly staff leapt at the chance to buy it and add to the existing magic material.
“Adding this, I think, will make the Lilly one of the major places to go to study the history of magic,” said Rebecca Bauman, head of curatorial services and curator of modern books.
Bauman said the collection presents a lot of opportunities for study, even outside of the world of magic and stage performance. She said scholars in math, science and history could learn from magical feats and tricky productions.
“One would think that, maybe a library like the Lilly wouldn't be collecting in the area of magic, since it's not something that is taught at IU, or at almost any university,” said Lilly Library director Joel Silver. “But if you look more closely at magic, you realize that many of the components of magical performance are indeed part of the curriculum at IU.”
Intentional deceit and illusions in magic prompt conversations about truth, reality and humanity, Bauman said. She said she hopes students in particular find that aspect of the collection useful.
“We're in a time(that) when I scroll through the news, I really have to think about what's real and what's not right,” Bauman said. “The magician says, 'I'm going to lie to you, I'm going to trick you,’ and then proceeds to kind of stack up these lies and these moves. And you're left with this sense of wonder and amazement.”
Ben said he hopes the collection inspires outside-of-the-box ideas and sparks curiosity.
“The goal, to me, was not to assemble a collection to turn people into magicians,” Ben said. “Magic, to me, is a prism that you can apply to virtually any field that refracts light into different strands that you may not have thought about.”
Ben’s collection will be available to the public after an extensive cataloging process.
“There have to be detailed descriptions of both the printed and manuscript materials in order for people to be able to find and use them effectively,” Silver said. “It will take some time to do that.”
