Archive: Around Town

The crystal ball from the movie "The Wizard of Oz" – one of Hollywood's most iconic objects – is coming to Cornell University Library this spring.  On view alongside an exhibition of Cornell's witchcraft collection, the famous film prop has been equipped with technology to recreate the movie's effect of conjuring images on its surface.  The crystal ball has been loaned to the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections by Cornell alumnus Jay Walker, chairman of Walker Digital and founder of Priceline.com.

"We are honored to host this spectacular artifact, and grateful to Jay Walker for making this loan possible. This is the first time the crystal ball has been displayed outside of the Walker Library of the History of the Human Imagination and we hope students and the community at large will enjoy it," said Katherine Reagan, Cornell's curator of rare books and manuscripts.

The crystal ball will be on view in the Kroch Library rotunda, Level 2B, from April 30 until June 25. Open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday May 5, the exhibit is free and open to the public.

When "The Wizard of Oz" was made in 1939, artists painstakingly hand-painted every frame of film to depict what the Wicked Witch of the West saw in the crystal ball – one of film's earliest special effects.

Around 25 inches in diameter and made of hand-blown glass, the crystal ball was believed lost until it was discovered in a prop house maintained by the creator of the crystal ball, Kenneth Strickfaden. A theater prop company constructed a replica of its missing wooden base, embellished with images of flying monkeys.

The crystal ball is being shown in association with "The World Bewitch'd: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections," which documents the spread of the belief in witchcraft across Europe, including the long history of persecution of accused witches. "The World Bewitch'd" was curated by University Librarian Emerita Anne R. Kenney and Kornelia Tancheva, university librarian at the University of Pittsburgh.

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