Gardner '69 fund brings magicians to campus

Lynn Shostack, Gardner’s wife, began the Magic Project shortly after Gardner’s death from muscular dystrophy in 2001. Gardner’s deep love for magic began in his childhood and continued through the rest of his life, Shostack explained.

“After he died in 2001, I wanted to do something that reflected who he was, because he was one in a million,” Shostack said. “So it had to have a lot of things in it that reflected him, and he worked his way through Princeton doing magic shows.”

The grants that come from the Magic Project are for serious scholarly work, Shostack noted.

“Magic is a much deeper subject than most people think,” she said, adding that the fund is “devoted to the faculty being able to pursue areas that they personally are interested in, in areas where there’s not a lot of funding.”

The faculty projects sponsored by the fund “don’t necessarily have to have a connection to magic, but because the subject is so deep, there is lots of room to find subjects that are very serious and have connections to magic,” she added.

The magicians were not on campus today, however, as a part of the scholarly research. Shostack said that she wanted to include an aspect of magic for no other reason than to put a smile on someone’s face.

“In the fall we try [to bring the magicians to campus] so the students can have a little fun and lighten up a little because it’s serious here at Princeton,” she said. “It’s always a secret. No one ever knows when it’s going to be. They come to campus and perform strictly for the amusement of students.”

One of the magicians performing on campus, Francis Menotti, said that he enjoys the effect magic has on the people he performs for.

“The idea is that we’re going around and infiltrating people’s stressed-out lives trying to get them to forget their problems for a minute or two, to sort of give them a different perspective on things by showing them something impossible,” Menotti said.

“The context here is that it’s unexpected. People are sitting around here studying, they’re not ready to see magic, they’re kind of in their own little world ... they get a few moments out of the mundane reality that they’re in,” he added.

Some of the students who had the chance to witness the magic said that they enjoyed the break from their studies.

“It was nice to not have to think about midterms and papers for five minutes,” Mariel Calloway ’11 said.

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Echoing her enjoyment, Spencer Bowley ’11 said that “He just kind of walked up and said, ‘Hey, let me show you some magic.’ It was really cool.”

Menotti said that he likes performing for older people because their reactions are sometimes even better than those of children.

“There is this misconception that magic is for kids, but that is not so,” Menotti said. “In fact, the younger someone is, the less they appreciate the impossibility that is magic.”

Shostack said that because her husband never shared his secrets or the secrets of others, she can still appreciate a magician’s tricks.

“We would go to magic shows, and I would [ask] ‘how is that done?’ ” Shostack said. “He never told me how any illusion was done because he said ‘if you knew, then you’d be disappointed in how primitive it really is.’ ”