Written by Sereen Suleiman
Edited by Max Gonzalez Burdick & Sarah Walters
A magician’s most valuable asset is not the rabbit in the hat or the magic wand. Rather, it is the secrets to his or her trademark tricks. For example, Houdini is remembered as one of the greatest magicians of all time because of his tricks and how remarkable (not to mention dangerous) they were for his time. This brings up the question of how generational secrets from magicians dating back to the time of the Egyptian magician, Dedi, in 2,700 B.C. right up to the present, have been brought back and improvised throughout the years. Well, believe it or not (as Robert Ripley would say), there are magicians today with libraries of their own, allowing knowledge of magicians’ secrets to be passed on to generations of breakthrough magicians and the public alike.
One of the biggest names in magic (who also owns a magician library) happens to be none other than David Copperfield. Yes, the famous Las Vegas illusionist, David Copperfield. This year, I had the privilege of attending the 2021 American Library Association Annual Virtual Conference and Exhibition in June, and one of the speakers was Copperfield. Copperfield is currently the owner of the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, which contains the world’s largest collection of historically significant magic artifacts, books, and memorabilia. Additionally, the library houses “approximately 80,000 items, including Houdini’s Water Torture Cabinet and Metamorphosis Trunk, Orson Welles’ Buzz Saw illusion, and automata (created by Robert-Houdin).” There are also “15,000 magic books, thousands of graphic images, prints, posters, playbills, photographs, manuscripts, letters, and scrapbooks of leading magicians throughout the years.” That being said, Copperfield’s library is available exclusively for researchers.
David Copperfield’s History of Magic will be available to purchase on October 26, 2021. Pre-order on Amazon if interested.
Fortunately, however, there are other magician librarians that continually preserve the knowledge of illusionists. In fact, this next curator that is about to be mentioned is also based in Vegas. His name is Leo Behnke, and aside from being a professional magician, he has been obtaining books on magic for the past sixty-five years. He even worked as a curator in David Copperfield’s library for some time back in 1993. Small world indeed! When he first settled in Vegas, he established a small magic library that had “well over 2,000 volumes.” Later on, though, he made the decision to close his library and start the company Ace of Books with his wife, Pat McCarty, who just happened to be the founder of the preservation lab at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries. Currently, they receive numerous requests from magicians to preserve and/or restore their magic books. For those interested in Behnke’s archival techniques, he published a book in 2000 titled The Conservation of Magic, which explains how to “[preserve] and [organize] magic books, ephemera, and collectibles.”
Now we cross to the other side of the country, right in Manhattan, in which there is an institution based on the fifth floor of a high-rise building. This institution is known as the Conjuring Arts Research Library, “one of the rarest repositories of magical literature in the world.” A unique feature of this library is that magic books are available in their original native language, including Latin, French, and even Persian. Translators are, of course, provided by the institution when needed. This permits magicians from all over the world to gather at this particular institution to practice, study, and research magic.
Magic is more than just waving a wand or chanting spells like Harry Potter. It is a performing art that is studied, practiced, perfected, displayed, and, ultimately, preserved. This shows that librarians are needed in the most unlikely of places. Now that is magic!
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