Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out about an exhibition that puts New York at the center of the golden age of magic and magicians. We’ll also get details on the tentative settlement that ended the two-day strike by 950 professors at New York University.
Thomas Solomon, a magician, needed a volunteer. Annemarie van Roessel stepped up and said that she heard the click when he snapped the 140-year-old handcuffs behind his back. He asked the usual magician questions: Were the handcuffs locked on his wrists? “They are very secure,” she said dutifully. Is there any way he could get out of them? “Not that I can tell,” she replied. What about the key? “I have the key,” she said, holding it up. For the next 50 seconds he talked about restraints he had acquired over the years — handcuffs, leg irons, shackles and chains. He mentioned Harry Houdini, who could seemingly slip out of anything. Then he turned around. The cuffs were off. His hands were free. Not every morning starts like that at the Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center, which had invited Solomon to see an exhibition called “Mystery and Wonder: A Legacy of Golden Age Magicians in New York City.” Van Roessel, who curated it, said the golden age began in the 1870s and lasted until just before World War II, when New York was the center of the magic world in the United States — as well as vaudeville shows and circuses that featured magicians. The Library for the Performing Arts, part of the New York Public Library, says that it has given magic “its rightful place alongside theater, dance, film and music for more than 100 years” — ever since a man who practiced medicine (but not magic) donated 1,500 books about magic, some old and valuable, some new and less so. The donor was Saram Ellison, a physician who was the city’s medical examiner as well as a ravenous collector who accumulated not just books but paraphernalia like magic wands (although magicians prefer to call them “magicians’ wands”). Houdini added to Ellison’s holdings: When he visited the grave of a 19th-century magician in Germany, Houdini spotted a fragment of a wand and gave it to Ellison. Houdini, famous though he was, was not Member No. 1 of the Society of American Magicians when it was founded in New York in 1902. That was Ellison. Houdini was not elected to the society until two years later. Solomon talked about the cozy relationship between the police and celebrities like Houdini — and how they in effect collaborated on stunts — as he looked at a display case with a letter from the police in Omaha. The document confirmed that it had taken 12 minutes to shackle Houdini and lock him in the most secure cell in town and that he had escaped in less than four minutes. There is also a newspaper photograph of an elephant that disappeared in a Houdini trick. Really? An elephant? “I think that the retelling of it over the last 100 years made it a far better illusion than it actually was, if I can say that in the kindest way possible,” Solomon said. “He marketed it as one of the largest illusions on the stage, and then contrasted that with some of his smaller close-up magic — ‘You’re going to see the biggest, most spectacular illusion ever, and on the same show, you’re going to see some of the smallest, most intricate magic.’” And he often performed it at the New York Hippodrome, a huge theater with a stage that could hold an entire circus, not just a single elephant. “If you were maybe directly in front” for the elephant trick, he said, “the elephant trick may have been far more deceptive, let’s put it that way, than if you were sitting to the far right or the far left.” WEATHER Expect cloudy skies in the morning before it becomes sunny. Temperatures will near 69. Showers are likely tonight, with a low around 50. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until April 2 (Holy Thursday, Passover). QUOTE OF THE DAY “People in executive positions frequently float test balloons. I think that this test balloon showed that it wasn’t a very feasible proposal.” — State Senator Liz Krueger, on why Mayor Zohran Mamdani seems to have all but given up on raising city property taxes 9.5 percent to help close a multibillion-dollar budget gap. The latest Metro news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Tentative settlement in N.Y.U. strike
After a two-day walkout, faculty members at New York University reached a tentative settlement on Wednesday that their union said would provide substantial salary increases. Many of the strikers — who teach roughly a quarter of the classes at N.Y.U. but are not in line for tenure — had complained that their salaries were falling behind tenure-track colleagues and were not keeping up with the steep costs of living in New York. The university and the union said that none of the striking faculty members would make less than $91,000 starting in September and that 95 percent would earn more than $100,000. They stand to receive average raises of 20 percent this year and increases of 3.5 percent a year for the rest of the five-year contract, according to Brendan Hogan, a spokesman for the union, the Contract Faculty United-U.A.W. Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for N.Y.U., said that the deal “provides meaningful raises and comprehensive benefits that will improve the lives of every member.” Some 29,000 undergraduates were returning from spring break as the professors walked out on Monday morning. With seven weeks left in the semester, substitutes were called in, and administrators helped lead lectures. But a number of students declined to attend classes and joined the picket line. And some seniors worried that work on their theses would be hindered if they could not meet with their advisers. My colleagues Troy Closson and Kaja Andric write that N.Y.U. may not be the last high-profile university in New York City to face turmoil before the academic year ends. The student workers’ union at Columbia University authorized a strike two weeks ago, seeking higher wages amid what it called a “cost-of-living crisis.” At N.Y.U., the negotiations that had begun last fall continued for hours after the professors went on strike. Senior officials in the office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke with both sides, hoping to keep them at the table. Some undergraduates were happy to see the strike end relatively quickly. “We essentially missed out on six hours of class time,” said Sara Ettinger, a junior studying film at the university’s Tisch School of the Arts. “The fact that the people who are running the university are making upward of a million dollars, whereas our professors can’t make enough to comfortably live, is so insane.” METROPOLITAN DIARY To the rescue
Dear Diary: I was on the 1 train. We stopped at Columbus Circle. A woman in a mechanical wheelchair tried to get on but got stuck. She stood and asked for help with the chair. A few of us tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge. The conductor appeared, lifted the chair, put it in the car and the returned to his booth. The woman sat down and told me the chair weighed over 200 pounds. Talk about a superconductor. — Linda Herskovic Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
