The Hudson River Museum has some great stuff going on today in celebration of their fantastic exhibit: Gilded Age Magic . The exhibit runs through the summer through September 9, 2012.
One of the starting points of the exhibit is former Yonkers magician Harry Kellar (1849-1922), who was an international stage magician durning the turn of the century but lived in Yonkers in between touring.
Contemporaries and friends of Kellar included Harry Houdini (1874-1926)and Howard Thurston (1869-1936). Previous to Kellar, magicians often posed as Chinese conjurers, even when they were Caucasian. Kellar was one of the first to come up with his own persona, and blazed a trail for the traditional top hatted magician that we see today. The exhibition will feature vintage theatrical posters, costumes and magic ephemera from little seen private collections.
The exhibition was inspired by the research of current Yonkers magician Benjamin Levy on Harry Kellar’s connection to Yonkers. The objects on view are drawn from The Rory Feldman Collection and The Bjorn Hanson Collection.
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