David Ben’s Collection Heads to Lilly Library

David ben’s extensive collection has a new home at Indiana University’s Lilly Library, the institution that also houses many of the artifacts Ricky Jay acquired during his life. It was the Lilly’s care toward Jay’s items, in fact, that led David to send his there.

“One of the problems is that collections are generally bequeathed by some magic enthusiast to an institution, and then they’re abandoned. They just sit in the basement of that institution,” David told THE EYE. The Lilly’s handling of Jay’s material, however, proved they were different. “They showed the wherewithal, the energy, the commitment—not just in terms of personnel, but actual money… because they view that magic is an underserved area of academic discipline.”

Ordered Chaos: one of many banks of magic books on shelves in David Ben’s studio. Courtesy of David Ben

David has sent approximately 250 banker boxes to the Lilly, and has 80 additional boxes he plans to ship there in due course. He also has several of his items digitized, which he plans to send to the Lilly as well. The size of his collection came in part from older magicians in Toronto bequeathing their own collections to him, and also from his work over the years. “I was probably the first person to produce Penn & Teller in a two-man show in Toronto, in ‘82 or ‘83,” he said. His correspondence with Penn & Teller from that show is one example of papers in the collection.

Other contents include roughly 250 paper silhouettes by Dai Vernon, several notable books including Magic of Robert Harbin, the counterfeit version of the book (signed!), and a first edition of Grand Exposé of the Science of Gambling, which came out in 1860. There are also thousands of photographs documenting magicians throughout the 20th century, complete files for The Sphinx and The Linking Ring, and personal notebooks from masters like Sid Lorraine, Stewart James, and Vernon.

Collection of publications by, or associated with, the great American magician T. Nelson Downs. Courtesy of David Ben

David also plans to be available to the Lilly and answer any questions curators have about the collection. “I wanted to do this now because I believe it’s important to make myself available to the Lilly to help them understand what they’ve got,” he said. A layperson, for example, might think they had two Harbin books instead of one real one and one counterfeit.