INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY
OF THE CONJURING ARTS

The International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts the worlds largest collection of the history of the art of magic, provides a safe, permanent home for antiquarian books, illusions and ephemera on magic and the allied arts.

The Museum, owned by David Copperfield, was founded in 1991 after Copperfield purchased, at auction, the Mulholland Library of the Conjuring and the Allied Arts. The collection contains some 80,000 pieces, including 15,000 magic books, some of which date back to the 16th century. It also includes the first magic book ever to be published in the New World, Houdini memorabilia, and other priceless items.

Following this purchase, the collection expanded with Copperfield's acquisition on individual pieces and entire collections, including the Cole Collection. The largest in the United Kingdom, the Cole Collection totaling 5,000 cubic feet of magic-related documents and artifacts, and was formerly in storage at Sotheby's in London. The Museum will also house the Dr. Robert J. Albo Collection, possibly the most important private collection of antiquarian magical props and apparatus ever assembled. Recent acquisitions also include the Jay Marshall poster collection and the Dante/Thurston collection.

The library collection houses works in more than 20 languages, ranging from the 16th century to contemporary volumes.  Materials of Heller, Bosco, LeRoy, Goldin, Cazaneuve, Vanek, Dobler, Okito, Blitz, Dante, Herrmann, Chung Ling Soo, Thurston, Blackstone and thousands of other artists.

It also contains thousands of graphic images, prints, poster, playbills and photographs chronicling the wonder workers of yesteryear, from the most modern of street performers to the most bombastic stage illusionists. In addition, the collection includes countless manuscripts, letters, and scrapbooks of leading magicians throughout the years.  
The collection also houses hundreds of Houdini items donated to the Mulholland Collection by Harry Houdini himself, including the original Edison cylinders of the only known recordings of Houdini's voice, dating back to 1914. Among the other treasures of the Museum are;

• Automata built by Robert Houdin, the father of modern magic, from whom Houdini took his name.

• Professor Hoffmann's props for the cup and balls.

• Actual coins Wyman the Wizard caused to pass through President Abraham Lincoln's hands.

• Houdini's instructions to himself on performing the Metamorphosis illusion.

• Houdini's Vanishing Lamps - still in working order.

• Okito's Floating Ball - which, at the time, fooled even magicians.

• Houdini's Metamorphosis Trunk - the ancestor of one the most popular contemporary illusions.

• Channing Pollock props - the dove the producing Ed Sullivan act which inspired a thousand other night club acts.

• Houdini-Kellar letters - a fascinating three-year exchange of barbs, ideas and opinions by two legendary performers.

• The turban owned by Alexander, "The Man Who Knows"  - indeed, the turban suggests exactly how Alexander "knew."

• Cardini's tuxedo, monocle, and personal manipulative props.

• Chung Ling Soo rifle - possibly the weapon that ended Soo's life and career on stage when his famous bullet-catching feat ended in death.

• Dante's Spirit Cabinet - the precursor of the live midnight spook show illusions which frightened thrill seekers in the 40's and 50's.

• Maskelyne's Decapitated Princess Chair; and Orson Wells' Buzz saw Illusion designed for Rita Hayworth, and performed with Marlene Dietrich.


Some of the important early works of literature housed in the Museum include:

• The first edition of Scott's The Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584 the first important work in the English language to discuss to discuss conjurers' methods, written at the time to save conjurers from being burned at the stake for witchcraft.

• Hocus Pocus Jr., 1654

• Dean's Whole Art of Legerdemain, of Hocus Pocus in Perfection, 1st ed.,

• Professor Hoffmann's own annotated copies of Modern Magic, More Magic and Later Magic, which revolutionized the art of magic at the end of the nineteenth century.

Stone lithographs of magicians advertising their incredible feats line the museum walls. Often these posters depict the actual prop standing only a few feet away on the museum floor.     

The preservation of these priceless items is the Museum's primary mission. Thousands of documents, posters and books have been rescued from decay as part of the Museum's ongoing conservation and restoration program.

Access to the collection is available to scholars interested in the history of conjuring upon written application to the Archivist.


CLICK HERE FOR ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST COVER PHOTO OF COPPERFIELD'S COLLECTION