 When he traveled to Europe with his family after graduation, he found the masquette itself in the Berlin Museum, and intrigued by the Olmec culture, took time to look at other specimens in the Maximilian Collection in Vienna, and later, in Madrid.Stirling was a teaching fellow at the University of California during 1920–21.He then joined the Smithsonian Institution, as a museum aide and assistant curator in its Division of Ethnology at the National Museum.