introduction to the exhibit |

Thousands of Little Colored Windows*
Brown University?s Stamp Collections

Look Closely. These tiny rectangles are artifacts of place and time. Vibrant and encoded, postage stamps reveal the stories of their designers, producers, and users. They display national identities, tastes, and politics and communicate shared viewpoints, disputes, and histories. Stamps are not only used to mail messages, they are messages.

Almost immediately after the first postage stamp went into circulation, people began to collect them. For those dedicated to the hobby, collecting stamps offers a contemplative activity and the thrill of the chase, lessons in history and a tour of the world. What meaning do they hold for those who do not identify as collectors?

During the Fall 2015 semester, students in the Museum Collecting and Collections course at Brown University delved into the vast stamp collections at the John Hay Library to investigate the objects of this fascination. The encyclopedic national and global collections of Webster Knight (Class of 1876), George S. Champlin, and Robert T. Galkin (Class of 1949) serve as the foundation of the holdings. In addition, the library maintains specialized collections of postal, historical, geographic, and design-related interests. The collections, estimated at nearly one million stamps, continue to grow each year.

With this exhibition, the students showcase the depth and breadth of these collections, moving beyond the rarity of individual items to explore the value of stamps for research and education. Each case study in this gallery opens up these little windows for a better view of the big ideas they frame.

The Crying of Lot 49