This morning, I took a guided tour titled Mystery & Wonder, A Legacy of Golden Age Magicians in New York City, and since it was offered in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located right in my backyard on the Lincoln Center Plaza complex, I didn’t have far to go! Among the many fascinating things I learned was that the Golden Age of magic, 1875 to the 1930s, was especially rooted in New York City. The tour was superb, so if you are in NYC anytime before July 11, be sure to sign up( it’s free).

There were about 20 people taking the tour with me (many of them quite tall!). As the tour group gathered, the guide, who was also the Curator of the exhibit, asked if there were any magicians in our group. I thought about raising my hand to say my son, Danny, is an excellent amateur magician, but decided against it! No hands went up, and I wondered if she was relieved or disappointed. We entered the first room of the exhibit, gathering as close to the soft-speaking guide as possible. I was on the outer edge of the group, trying to take a few photos, so when a group of three latecomers arrived, I took notice. For a split second, I was distracted by one of the men, thinking he looked vaguely familiar and wondering whether that was his real hair or a very black, extremely thick wig. Then I snapped back to attention, very pleased I had signed up for this fascinating tour.

The guide welcomed questions, but since she was both the Curator and an excellent communicator, there were very few. The group of three latecomers stuck together on the perimeter, occasionally stopping to whisper about one of the exhibits but otherwise listening politely. As we entered the last room of the exhibit, almost an hour into the tour, I was standing directly opposite the man with all that thick black hair when it dawned on me why he looked so familiar… that my friends, was David Copperfield!

Imagine one of the most famous living magicians taking a free, public tour of this exhibit, when he owns over 80,000 magic artifacts, which are housed in his own private museum in Las Vegas and serve as a research facility for magicians and historians. If he had gotten there earlier, I wonder if he would have raised his hand when the guide asked if there were any magicians on the tour? All in all, a truly magical Saturday morning!