Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum

When the Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum was dispersed in 1971, its collections were divided among the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Office of Art Properties, Barnard's Minor Latham Theatre, the Barnard Library, and the Music Library. The Rare Book and Manuscript Library received manuscripts, historical recordings (78 rpm discs and tape), theatrical printed ephemera (including playbills, scrapbooks, and programs), engravings, paintings, portraits, and photographs.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED Brander Matthews (1852-1929) first began collecting puppets in 1867 at the age of sixteen, when on his first trip to France he bought a set of eleven Guignol hand puppets with wooden heads. His puppet collection, along with the various stage models and masks he had collected over the years, eventually became part of the Dramatic Museum, which opened in 1911.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED After Matthew's death, the Museum's curators continued to expand the collections, and created an inventory of the puppets and masks in the 1960s.

BIOGHIST REQUIRED When the museum was dissolved in 1971, the puppets and masks were transferred first to the Art Properties Department, and then to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1981 & 1983, where they remain. The set models were first on long-term loan to Barnard, and then most were for many years on display in Dodge Hall; they were transferred to Art Properties in 1996, then to RBML in 2001. Many pieces included in the Museum's 1960s inventories are no longer in the collection. Only the remaining items are described in this finding aid.

Appointed to the Columbia College faculty in 1892, Matthews began collecting theater-related memorabilia in 1911, convinced that the only way to learn about drama was through first-hand acquaintance with artifacts, images, and texts of the theatrical past. Matthews then donated his own collection of theatrical memorabilia to the University to support the burgeoning study of world-wide theater history. He commissioned stage models representing historical periods, collected the scripts and theatrical designs of his contemporaries, gathered more than 30,000 images of actors and entertainers, and purchased masks and puppets from dealers and performers all over the world. Thanks to a generous endowment, additions to the collection were made for decades after Matthews died in 1929. The Dramatic Museum was housed in Low Library at Columbia until it was closed in 1971; since then the collection has been split between various archival repositories at Columbia University.