It has only been five years since we lost the great Ricky Jay. He was incredibly well-regarded for his boisterous performance style and made a grand impact on the magic community. Jay can even be found in supporting roles of some blockbuster movies, including the magic masterpiece The Prestige or Boogie Nights, an intoxicating look at the adult film industry.
What many don’t know is behind the scenes Jay was an avid historian of magic and spiritualism. His collection was grand and covered both artifacts from his personal career and research spanning many topics within performance history. Indiana University recently acquired his entire archive and is making it available to the public for the first time ever.
In 2022, the collection was acquired by the Lilly Library at Indiana University, and since then, librarians have been culling through everything to organize it properly. There are about 103 boxes of material to be sorted through from Jay’s archive, so this was no easy task.
