Lillie Rovno was deployed by the United States military in Germany, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii, and continued to travel the world in later years. A scholar of Russian culture interested in performance arts, Rovno collected materials on a broad array of art forms: Kabuki and Japanese visual arts, ballet, Jewish music, and Italian music. The collection includes numerous photos, some autographed, of prominent ballet performers from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and the U.S., with many of the photos documenting visits of Soviet ballet companies to the U.S. in the 1980s and early 1990s. The collection also contains musical scores from Italy, the U.S., and Israel, including Israeli songbooks from the early 1950s.
The Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese War Prints Collection (Nisshin Nichi-Ro sensō nishikie; 日清・日露戦争錦絵) is a collection of 110 nishikie prints by various late 19th Century Japanese ukiyo-e artists depicting events during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, as well as other events, dating from 1864-1904.
This collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, notes, slides, audio and video cassettes, negatives, transparencies, articles, books, ephemera, postcards and realia objects.