Stewart Culin

Robert Stewart Culin (July 13, 1858 – April 8, 1929) was an American ethnographer and author interested in games, art and dress. Culin played a major role in the development of ethnography, first concentrating his efforts on studying the Asian-Americans workers in Philadelphia. His first published works were "The Practice of Medicine by the Chinese in America" and "China in America: A study in the social life of the Chinese in the eastern cities of the United States", both dated 1887. He believed that similarity in gaming demonstrated similarity and contact among cultures across the world.

Born Robert Stewart Culin, a son of Mina Barrett Daniel Culin and John Culin, in Philadelphia, Culin was schooled at Nazareth Hall. He entered his father's mercantile business after graduating from high school. While he had no formal education in anthropology, Culin played a role in the development of the field. His interest began with the Asian-American population of Philadelphia, then composed chiefly of Chinese-American laborers.

Early ethnographic approach could predated to 1884, when Culin collected advertisements information in Philadelphia.

His first published works were an 1887 article for a medical journal, "The Practice of Medicine by the Chinese in America" and his speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science on "China in America : a study in the social life of the Chinese in the eastern cities of the United States". In 1889 Culin published a report about Chinese Dominoes and Dice. In 1890 he wrote an article about Italian marionettes was inspired by a visit to a marionette theater in New York City.

Active in several ethnographic organizations during the late 1880s, Culin became involved with the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago during 1893. As an assistant curator, Culin organized several game-related exhibitions. In addition, 1891 saw the publication of two papers. The first treated the street games of city boys, the second dealt with Chinese gambling games, providing explanations on Fan-Tan and Pak Kop Pin. At the World Exposition, Culin met Frank Hamilton Cushing. The two became friends and endeavored to create the first cumulative documentation on the world's games.

In 1892 Culin became Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology. Married on March 18, 1893, to Helen Bunker, Culin published on the games exhibit at the 1891 Chicago exposition. In 1899 he became curator at the Free Museum of Science and Arts in Philadelphia on American and general ethnology.

Korean Games, with comparisons to those of other Asian cultures, were the topic of Culin's first book, published in 1895. This work was inspired by Cushing, then of the Bureau of American Ethnology of Washington. Culin became interested in chess and card games and published a paper on the topic in 1886. He worked with Cushing on an article called Arrow games and their variants in America and the Orient. When Cushing became ill, Culin continued the work and eventually published three inter-related papers: American Indian Games (1898), Hawaiian Games (1899) and Philippine Games (1900). After Cushing's death in 1900, Culin published a revised version of American Indian Games in 1903.

Although he had no formal training, Robert Stewart Culin is known today as an expert on games as well as for his museum work. His influence was not limited to the two great institutions where he spent his career—the University of Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn Museum. Culin was also a founding member of both the American Anthropological Association and the American Folklore Society, and was an experienced collector and exhibitor who organized exhibitions at world's fairs in Madrid (1892) and Chicago (1893). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1897.