Robert J. Lund

Born:   4 May 1925 in Saginaw, Michigan.

Died: 20 October 1995.

Robert "Bob" J. Lund, a noted magic historian and author, was also one of the world's foremost magic collectors. He was born in Saginaw, Michigan and resided in the Detroit area for most of his life where worked as a reporter and editor on the newspapers in Detroit, Chicago and New York. He was also an editor for Motor Magazine and was the auto editor for Popular Mechanics Magazine. Lund served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Realizing that he lacked the flair for performing, Lund decided to make his mark on the magic world by becoming a student of magic history and collecting anything and everything related to the art. His accumulation was called the "largest such collection in private hands." In 1958 Lund purchased a large cache of rare books and manuscripts by occultist Aleister Crowley from Crowley's own collection, which Crowley had stored in a Detroit warehouse many years previously but had not reclaimed. Later that year he sold the collection to Philip Kaplan. Full details of the story may be found HERE.

Lund contributed articles to more than 20 magic journals and indexed numerous books on magic and magic history, including the Magico reprint of The Annals of Conjuring. He was the last editor of The Conjurors' Magazine (1948-1949), and edited the newsletter of the Magic Collectors Association (1962-1963).

He was awarded the Academy of Magical Arts Award of Merit in 1983, and the Literary Fellowship in 1988. He has also been honored by the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians.

With his wife, Elaine, Lund co-founded the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan. The museum was built around his collection of posters, playbills, books, photos, apparatus, scrapbooks, letters and thousands of other pieces of magic memorabilia and ephemera. The first building opened to the public 1 April 1978. A second building, the vacated former Marshall Public Library, was purchased in 1999 as the collection continued to expand.

Since Elaine Lund's passing in 2006, the museum has been governed by a board of directors and has become a non-profit corporation.

The American Museum of Magic

The American Museum of Magic is the largest magic museum in the United States open to the public. The collection is extensive, and includes both famous and obscure magicians (for example, it has artifacts from Clare Cummings, who was 'Milky The Twin Pines Magic Clown' and who donated most of his magic tricks to this museum). The museum celebrates the art of magic and the devotion of magicians to their craft. Founded on 1 April 1978, the museum celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2008.

As the Michigan Historical marker on the site notes: this "unique collection . . . celebrates the magician's arts of wonder and delight. Michigan's link to magic is no illusion for nearby Colon, Michigan, a center of magic manufacturing," and Harry Blackstone's home. Registered Site L1240 Erected 1985. Indeed, the town and Mr. Blackstone are noted in another historical marker in Colon.

 It has been described as "Smithsonian Museum of magic." "It is this wealth of extra, unexhibited stuff that gives this place such promise—an estimated half-million pieces of magic memorabilia in boxes, upstairs, in the basement, and across the parking lot in the library. The museum has thousands of files on everyone from Doug Henning to Donna Delberts, "the world's only lady fire eater," who turned out to be an AWOL American GI and a man."

Specifically, the museum includes 2,009 heralds, handbills, and window cards, 587 showbills, and over 5,000 programs, 10,000 books, 24,000 magazines, 46,000 photos and many letters. Magic sets, performer’s scrapbooks, and magic show apparatus are there. This includes the “Milk Can” and "Overboard Box" used by Harry Houdini. The half million (or more) objects occupy three floors. Memorabilia includes artifacts from thousands of conjurers, famous and obscure. (Of course, this is only a fraction of those who are attracted to the arcane arts—witness the 37,000 members in the International Magicians Society.) In any event, it even has escape apparatus actually used by Harry Houdini. The archive includes thousands of little-known illusionists. Magician David Copperfield calls it "one of my favorite places on earth.

Important exhibits include Doug Henning's "Zig Zag" illusion, and various apparatus used by Howard Thurston in "one of the largest illusion shows across America", which toured from 1908 until 1936.

All of this was personally put together by the late Robert Lund, a Detroit-area writer and editor who was an obsessed collector of magic artifacts, with the assistance of his wife, the late Elaine Lund. It is said Mr. Lund liked the craft and skills, but decided early on that he lacked the showmanship necessary to become a world class magician. Instead Lund determined that his mark on magic would be to become its foremost student of magic history and collect everything he could find that related to his beloved art. Following his lifelong quest, he "ultimately gathered a collection that grew to be one of the worlds largest and greatest."

The museum now includes apparatus, books, letters, diaries, manuscripts, memorabilia, playbills, photos, posters, scrapbooks, and a half million pieces of "ephemera."

The museum is housed in a 140-year-old Victorian building (built in 1868) which has been a saloon, billiard parlor, clothing store, and museum. It is located at 107 East Michigan Avenue, Marshall, Calhoun County, Michigan. The building has been meticulously restored by Bob and Elaine Lund. She silk screened window posters, restored floors, installed cabinets, and did major clean up. Their daughter has ably assisted. They "put their heart and souls into the Museum." The City of Marshall was sufficiently impressed that it awarded them a silver cup