Leland Stanford Jr., only son of Governor and railroad tycoon Leland Stanford Sr. and heiress Jane Lathrop Stanford, died suddenly in 1884, just shy of his 16th birthday. Renowned curators reckoned Leland Jr.’s early death a great loss to “the art-training” of the American people. Was his collecting that remarkable? Or was it a boyhood hobby amplified by his parents’ loss and remembrance? Sabrina Papazian, Phd candidate at the Stanford Archaeology Center, is student curator of Collecting in Life and Death: The Curatorial Legacy of Leland Stanford Jr.