Our History

The American Museum of Magic (AMM) was founded in 1978 by Detroit-area journalist Robert Lund and his wife, Elaine. The 1860s downtown building housed Mr. Lund’s private collection of magician archives and artifacts, a collection that ultimately grew to be one of the world’s largest and greatest in the field, including apparatus and illusions, more than 12,000 books on conjuring, letters, diaries, memorabilia, photographs, 3,000 posters, scrapbooks and periodicals, costumes and approximately 350,000 pieces of ephemera. After surveying the collections, renowned magic historian, author and illusionist Jim Steinmeyer marveled at these archival holdings and called AMM the “Smithsonian of American Magic.”

The collections were intermittently accessible, with Mr. Lund giving tours to the magic community and the lucky few who happened upon it. In 1995, Mr. Lund passed away and the museum came under the ownership of his wife, Elaine. Committed to Robert Lund’s desire to ensure these collections remained publicly accessible beyond their lifetimes, Elaine Lund incorporated the private collection and received 501(c)3 status.

In 1998, she purchased the city’s former Public Library building, a 1915 craftsman structure, located one block behind the museum building in order to accommodate researchers and to better house vast archival and library collections. Upon her death in 2006, both properties and the collections were transferred to the new non-profit museum.