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Exhibit | Learning through Play: British and French Tabletop Games from the 18th and 19th Centuries
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“The cottage of content: or, the right roads and wrong ways” (London, 1848) LEARNING THROUGH PLAY: BRITISH AND FRENCH TABLETOP GAMES FROM THE 18th AND 19th CENTURIES
Georgian & Victorian Games, Gift of Ellen Liman ‘57, P’88, and Early French Games, Loan from Doug Liman ‘88
May 21 – October 11, 2019
John Hay Library, Brown UniversityThe exhibition will be on display in the John Hay Library’s main gallery from May 21 through October 11, 2019; the exhibition is free and open to the public during the library’s regular hours: from May 28 through Labor Day, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; before May 28 and after Labor Day, Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., and Friday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Ellen Liman and Doug Liman are available for an interview or a lecture. For more information and images of the collection, please contact Heather Cole, Curator for Literary & Popular Culture Collections, heather_cole@brown.edu, or by phone, (401) 863-1512.
The Brown University Library is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring 18th and 19th century board games collected by the Liman family. Twenty-three Georgian and Victorian board games, along with jigsaw puzzles and other related items were given to the library by Ellen Liman ’57, P’88. A collection of 19th and 20th century French board games is on loan from the Limans’ son, filmmaker Doug Liman ‘88.
Joseph Meisel, the Joukowsky Family University Librarian, noted his enthusiasm for the Limans’ gift: “This is a wonderful addition to our extensive collection of popular culture materials and significantly extends the range of our holdings in the important area of games and play. As a historian of 19th-century Britain, I am particularly fascinated by how these games serve as documentary sources for deeper understanding of the complex concepts and values that the dominant segments of society sought to impart to their young as future leaders at home and in the world.”
Arthur and Ellen Liman began collecting vintage board games when their son Doug found an old game at a yard sale as a child. This first acquisition sparked an enchantment with games and their depictions of British culture, and the couple spent decades enthusiastically and meticulously building this and other related collections. The late Arthur Liman, a prestigious attorney, was attracted to these games for the historical record: games such as Wallis’s Picturesque Round Game of the Produce and Manufactures of the Counties of England and Wales (ca. 1840) serve as a lesson in how to be an informed citizen of a powerful empire, while others, such as The Railway Travellers (undated) show off new technologies. Other games, such as Every man to his station (1825) provide moral instruction for children. Ellen Liman, a gallerist, author, and painter, valued the games for their artistry, and “appreciated their design, their excellent engraving and later lithography, the delicacy of the hand-coloring, not to mention the charm and ingenuity of every game.” Considering where this collection should ultimately reside, Ellen recalled her formative arts education experiences at Pembroke College, where she majored in art and took courses at RISD, and explains, “Brown was influential to this collection. Since these games are not only educational but rare small works of art, I naturally gravitated to them.” Ellen and Arthur continued to engender an appreciation for antique board games in their son Doug, who has loaned part of his collection of 19th– and early 20th-century French games to this exhibition. Doug, who during his first year at Brown created BTV, Brown’s student-run television station, said: “As a filmmaker of movies and television series, I think of these old French games as early movies or plays, telling stories in a beautiful, artistic, and concise visual format.”
As the turn from the 18th to the 19th century approached in Great Britain, parents and teachers embraced a suggestion from the philosopher John Locke that “learning might be made a play and recreation to children.” A market for board games for instruction and delight flourished, but very few examples survive today. Those that have survived open a window onto the time period in which they were created, reflecting its social and moral priorities as well as a wide range of educational subjects. The games themselves are beautifully detailed: produced by a handful of the best-known publishers of the era, the hand-color engraved games look as vibrant and colorful as they did two centuries ago. Many of the games in the Limans’ collection include not only a game board, but original cases and instruction booklets as well.
The games join the John Hay Library’s rich collections of material on popular culture, and will be available online in May, and in the John Hay Library special collections reading room following the exhibition.
Dates: May 21 – October 11, 2019
Time: John Hay Library Hours
Location: John Hay Library, 20 Prospect Street, Providence, RI -
Event | American Sinologist Charles S. Gardner and the Chinese Collection at Brown with Dr. Li Wang
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Dr. Li Wang in the East Asian Collection room at the Rockefeller Library On Friday, May 10, 2019 at 12 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, Dr. Li Wang, Curator of East Asian Collection, will give a presentation, “American Sinologist Charles S. Gardner and Chinese Collection at Brown.”
This talk is free and open to the public. Coffee and cookies will be available.
The talk is based on Dr. Wang’s recent focused studies regarding Charles Sidney Gardner (1900-1966), a noted Sinologist and former Harvard University professor, who donated his entire personal collection, including a large number of Chinese rare books, to Brown University Library in his late years. It provides brief biological information on the family life, education, and scholarly career of Gardner, especially his link to China, a country where he lived as a visiting scholar during the 1920s and 1930s.
More information on Gardner and his collection
The talk will also address Gardner’s scholarly contributions and influences as a pioneer of American Chinese studies to the field. With regard to Gardner’s network and friendship with many Western and Chinese scholars, the talk will demonstrate various rare archival items recently found in the Collection. After reviewing Gardner’s insightful ideas and practices on building Chinese library collections, Dr. Wang will describe the process of Gardner’s valuable donations in the 1960s and present current developments at the Brown Library East Asian Collection.
For more information, please see the article by Li Wang: “A Cultural Envoy Who Should Not Be Forgotten: American Sinologist Charles S. Gardner and His Chinese Collection,” China Reading Weekly, April 3, 2019, available in Chinese and English.
Date: Friday, May 10, 2019
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect St, Providence -
Announcement | Amanda Strauss Named Associate University Librarian for Special Collections
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The Brown University Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Amanda Strauss as Associate University Librarian for Special Collections.
As Associate University Librarian, Ms. Strauss will oversee the University’s outstanding collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, and other unique and special materials. Reporting to and working in close partnership with Joseph Meisel, Joukowsky Family University Librarian, she will oversee the curators, staff, and operations of the John Hay Library and provide leadership for special collections stewardship, acquisitions, scholarly programming, research and education services, and resource development.
In the course of an extensive nationwide search, Ms. Strauss, who is currently Manager of Special Projects and Digital Services at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, impressed Library staff and participating faculty members with her experience and compelling ideas for advancing the mission of special collections at Brown. University Librarian Meisel said, “I am delighted that Amanda will be joining the Brown University Library in this critical leadership position. She will bring a dynamic vision to the John Hay Library and raise its profile as one of the nation’s great special collections libraries.
”As a member of the Brown University Library’s senior leadership team, Ms. Strauss will be a key contributor to shaping the Library’s strategic directions, advancing Library-wide planning and evaluation, and developing policies and procedures to promote operational excellence. She will work with faculty and Library staff to promote the use of Brown’s special collections holdings in research, teaching, exhibitions, outreach, and public programs across all academic divisions, while also bringing to bear her knowledge of the array of current tools for developing innovative digital initiatives for enhancing delivery of special collections content and services to scholarly and non-scholarly audiences alike.
An essential part of Ms. Strauss’ work will be to actively develop and contribute to initiatives that advance diversity and inclusion in special collections and throughout the Library. She will direct the Hay’s curatorial staff in evaluating collections strengths, setting acquisition priorities, and establishing effective collection management practices. How special collections are understood and used—especially through the lens of equity and inclusion—is an area where she brings experience and insight. Drawing upon her success at promoting institutional collaborations at the Schlesinger Library, Ms. Strauss will also help build stronger programmatic ties with other institutions at Brown, such as the John Carter Brown Library, the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, as well as exploring new opportunities for external partnerships.
Ms. Strauss earned both her MLIS with a concentration in Archival Studies and her MA in History from Simmons College. She also holds a BA in History and Spanish from Willamette University. The author of “Treading the Ground of Contested Memory: Archivists and the Human Rights Movement in Chile” (Archival Science 2015), she is a scholar of human rights archives as well as twentieth century women’s movements in the United States. Her path into special collections administration is rooted in research services, where she specialized in teaching with primary sources. While at Schlesinger, her particular focus has been on visioning and managing the library’s cutting-edge digital services program. Among other accomplishments at Schlesinger, Ms. Strauss developed and managed significant grant-funded projects, notably the Long 19th Amendment Project, which commemorates the centennial of the 19th Amendment, as well as the large-scale effort to document the digital footprint of the #metoo movement.
Ms. Strauss’ first day at the Brown University Library will be July 1. We look forward to welcoming her to Brown and working together to develop a compelling and creative vision to strengthen the activities and wider visibility of the John Hay Library as a center of scholarship and education.