He was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Pennsylvania. His parents were John Culin and Mina Barrett.
Culin had no formal education in anthropology. In 1889 Culin published his first report about Chinese games (of laborers in America); in 1890 an article about Italian Marionettes inspired by a visit in a marionette theater in New York. He worked in 1891 for the World Fair World's Columbian Exposition on a theme "games of the world", and also published two papers about street games of city boys, Chinese gambling games (explanation of Fan Tan, Pak Kop Pin). He also met at the exposition Frank Hamilton Cushing. They became friends and endeavored to create the first cumulative documentation on world's games.
In 1892 Culin became Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology.
He reported in 1893 about the games exhibit on the Columbian Exposition. He married Helen Bunker on March 18, 1893. In 1994 he wrote a paper about Mancala games.
Culin published his first book in 1895 about Korean games inspired by Cushing, of the Bureau of American Ethnology of Washington. Culin got interested in chess and card games and wrote a paper in 1986. He worked together with Cushing on "Arrow games and their variants in America and the Orient" but Cushing got ill and so Culin took on and published the work on three inter-related papers: "American Indian Games" in 1898, "Hawaiian Games" in 1899 and "Philippine Games" in 1900. Cushing died in 1900. As the work on the papers changed Culins views he publised in 1903 a revised paper about "American Indian Games".
In 1903 Culin resigned from the University of Pennsylvania and became curator of Ethnology at the Institute of Arts and Sciences of the Brooklyn Museum in New York. He began a series of collection expeditions to study Native Americans on the Northwest, Southwest coast and California, later on he went to Asian and Eastern Europe countries. One acquisition were paintings from the manuscript "Hamza nama"(also known as "Qissa i Amir Hamza").The collected items were metricously described with "the maker, use of the object, social position of the seller, the circumstances of purchase, the provenance". He had also a letter exchange with Franz Boas and George Dorsey. In 1907 Culin unified his 14 years of theories and ideas in the major book "Games of North American Indians" splitted up by category games of skill and games of chance.
After the publication of the book he changed and got interested in decorative art like costume, fashion, furniture and wrote articles about. This may be seen as Culin wanted the museum to be a place for people to study. Together with Women's Wear magazine he displayed contemporary fashion and changed museum rooms to study textiles and design. He also created traveling exhibits.
In the [1920s] he wrote 4 more papers about Asian games, retired from the Brooklyn Museum. He also became well known in the fashion industry. Culin died in 1929.
journal articles by Culin, Steward:
Writings
books:
biographies:
External links
Stuart Culin page at Univ of Waterloo